Foreign News
Singapore tightens rules for expat workers with an eye on local discontent
Singapore – One of the world’s most open economies is attempting a delicate balancing act.
On the one hand, the Southeast Asian city-state wants to lure the world’s best and brightest to bolster its workforce, one of Asia’s most diverse. On the other hand, it has to assure locals competing with foreigners for jobs that the system works for them, too, nipping potential resentment or xenophobia in the bud.
From next year, the government will tweak that calculus in favour of locals by raising the salary threshold for foreigners seeking approval to work in the city-state.
Last month, Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower announced that new applicants for the Employment Pass (EP) system will have to earn at least 5,600 Singapore dollars ($4,140) per month, up from 5,000 Singapore dollars ($3,700).
Applicants working in the financial services sector will have to earn at least 6,200 Singapore dollars ($4,600), compared with 5,500 Singapore dollars ($4,100) at present.
“By regularly updating the qualifying salaries based on the set wage benchmarks, we ensure a level-playing field for locals,” Manpower Minister Tan See Leng told parliament during a budget debate.
Analysts said the changes were not surprising for a government that has regularly tweaked the rules for expat workers, most recently in September 2022, when it raised the salary threshold by 500 Singapore dollars ($370).
Walter Theseira, an associate professor and labour economist at the Singapore University for Social Sciences (SUSS), said the move had been “telegraphed for a number of years”.
Theseira said that while the EP system was originally intended to import highly-skilled workers to fill gaps in the workforce, “the criteria seemed to have expanded and EP holders became more prevalent in the middle of the market as well”.
“This was perceived by local workers to be unwelcome competition for jobs that many skilled locals could do, so the government responded by re-calibrating the EP again upwards, so that based on salaries, it now targets more clearly the high-end,” he said.
Singapore has built its reputation on attracting foreign talent (Aljazeera)
For decades, Singapore, an island with no natural resources that is about the size of New York City, has built its reputation on an openness to foreign talent.
The number of EP holders has grown substantially over the years, fuelled in part by anxiety over the country’s rock-bottom birthrate and greying population.
As of December last year, there were about 205,400 EP holders in the city, up from 161,700 during the same month in 2021.
As far back as 2021, Tan acknowledged that Singaporeans, though recognising the need to attract foreign talent, had concerns that the influx came at the “expense” of local businesses.
A labour market report released by the Manpower Ministry last month showed that employment growth in 2023, comprising 88,400 positions in Singapore – excluding migrant domestic workers – was largely made up of foreigners.
The revision of the EP qualification criteria can be seen as “a strategic move” to appease age-old tensions over hiring foreign talent amid a crowded job market, said Joshua Yim, the CEO of Achieve Group, a talent acquisition consultancy.
The changes also come as the Southeast Asian country is gearing up for one of the most politically significant transitions in its history.
Singapore’s ruling People’s Action Party is set to fight the next general election, due by 2025, under new leadership as incumbent Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong prepares to step down after some two decades in office.
The issue of foreign workers became salient in the 2011 general election, when public discontent simmered over rising competition for jobs and increasing pressure on public infrastructure.
While most Singaporeans and permanent residents agree that immigration is generally good for the economy, slightly more than half also believe that immigrants take jobs away from locals, according to a 2021 survey by the Institute of Policy Studies.
In another survey conducted by the research firm Milieu Insight, Singaporeans were almost evenly divided on whether the nation struck the right balance between bringing in foreign workers and protecting local jobs.
Sid Suhas, the senior vice president and head of EMEA & APAC at the talent acquisition firm Cielo, said the visa changes are likely to prompt large employers to “focus more on attracting, developing and nurturing the local talent pool, particularly for junior professional and mid-level lower-skilled roles.”
With the higher salary threshold, companies are likely to adopt “a skills-first approach” when employing foreigners, Suhas said, focusing on talent in areas such as AI, technology, engineering and healthcare.
“The trend of limiting foreign talent deployment to specific skills and industries is inevitable. In the past, foreign talent had the opportunity to develop their careers in Singapore across various roles but now, the focus will likely be on senior and niche positions,” Suhas told Al Jazeera.
Suhas said he has already seen companies exploring alternative locations in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) such as Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, as a means of relocating key talent while still maintaining proximity to Singapore.
Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong is due to step down before the 2025 general elections (Aljazeera)
“Most SMEs [small to medium-sized enterprises] do not rely much on EP workforce as their core talent pool,” Yuit told Al Jazeera.
“Selected businesses may have EP hiring in the stated 5,000 or 5,500 [Singapore dollars] range for specialised roles but usually, that is for time-limited, project engagement or if they are in specialised sectors that rely on a foreign talent pool because of a lack of matching local workforce.”
But the increased labour costs could affect the profitability of SMEs with tighter budget constraints, said Achieve Group’s Yim.
“Local SMEs may not be so well-oiled in terms of their processes and operations, as compared to the MNCs,” Yim said.
“They will feel the heat because they have to go up against the big players with the financial muscles who can offer higher EP salaries and attract better-quality talent. They might feel that talent is being stolen away and thus, this group is at the shorter end of the stick.”
Xu Le, a lecturer from the department of strategy and policy at the National University of Singapore’s Business School, said the policy change could “spur local companies to think out of the box and explore alternative methods to enhance overall operational efficiency and labour productivity”, in turn benefitting the economy.
Beatrice Liu-Cheng, the CEO of Oriental Remedies Group, said that while the higher-qualification threshold could pose challenges for her chain of Chinese medicine clinics, it would also be an “opportunity to further enhance the diversity and expertise” within its workforce.
Liu-Cheng said the changes would encourage her to seek out and nurture Singaporean talent through training programmes, mentorship initiatives and partnerships with educational institutions.
Singapore is known for its business-friendly environment (Aljazeera)
While the migration changes are set to raise the cost of doing business, Singapore’s advantages, including a business-friendly environment, its strategic location and world-class infrastructure, will continue to attract international companies, analysts said.
Singapore is expected to remain “the preferred choice” for firms’ regional headquarters, said Cielo’s Suhas, even if deploying smaller teams becomes more common due to the higher costs.
Suhas said the changes would also accelerate the various government initiatives aimed at creating high-quality jobs for locals, including early talent programmes and re-skilling programmes for mid-to-late career professionals.
“As a result, we anticipate that global companies setting up in Singapore will increasingly prioritise hiring Singaporeans,” he said.
Singapore ranks second in the 2023 World Economic Forum’s Global Talent Competitiveness Index, behind Switzerland.
Nicholas Sim, an associate professor at SUSS’s business school, said that businesses seeking to establish a foothold in Asia are still likely to prioritise Singapore due to its “high-quality infrastructure, efficient and stable government and access to a high-calibre talent pool”.
Besides the EP scheme, there are other avenues for foreign talent to come to Singapore.
In 2023, the Manpower Ministry launched the Overseas Networks & Expertise Pass for “top talent” in business, arts and culture, sports, academia and research.
As of January, the ministry had approved nearly 4,200 applications for the pass.
“Going forward, it’s a clear sign that the Singapore government wants to bring high-calibre individuals into the Singapore workforce – and firms will need to deliberate more carefully about hiring top-tier foreign candidates who are skilled and can add to Singapore’s long-term competitiveness,” Yim said.
”All the more, MNCs will see Singapore as a place for the cream of the crop.”
(Aljazeera)
Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders, who snapped one of the most famous photographs taken in outer space, has died at the age of 90.
Officials say a small plane he was flying crashed into the water north of Seattle, Washington.
Anders’ son Greg confirmed that his father was flying the small plane, and that his body was recovered on Friday afternoon. “The family is devastated. He was a great pilot. He will be missed,” a statement from the family reads.
Anders – who was a lunar module pilot on the Apollo 8 mission – took the iconic Earthrise photograph, one of the most memorable and inspirational images of Earth from space.
Taken on Christmas Eve during the 1968 mission, the first crewed space flight to leave Earth and reach the Moon, the picture shows the planet rising above the horizon from the barren lunar surface.
Anders later described it as his most significant contribution to the space programme.
The image is widely credited with motivating the global environmental movement and leading to the creation of Earth Day, an annual event to promote activism and awareness of caring for the planet.
Speaking of the moment, Anders said: “We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing that we discovered was the Earth.”
Officials said on Friday that Anders crashed his plane around 11:40PDT (1940BST).
The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said the 90-year-old was flying a Beechcraft A A 45 – also known as a T-34. The agency said that the plane crashed about 80ft (25m) from the coast of Jones Island.
Anders also served as the backup pilot to the Apollo 11 mission, the name of the effort that led to the first Moon landing on July 24, 1969.
Following Anders’ retirement from the space programme in 1969, the former astronaut largely worked in the aerospace industry for several decades. He also served as US Ambassador to Norway for a year in the 1970s.
But he is best remembered for the Apollo 8 mission and the iconic photograph he took from space.
“In 1968, during Apollo 8, Bill Anders offered to humanity among the deepest of gifts an astronaut can give. He traveled to the threshold of the Moon and helped all of us see something else: ourselves,” Nasa Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement.
Mark Kelly, a former astronaut who now serves as a US Senator for the state of Arizona, said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that Anders “inspired me and generations of astronauts and explorers. My thoughts are with his family and friends”.
[BBC]
A Chinese spacecraft carrying rock and soil samples from the far side of the Moon has lifted off from the lunar surface to start its journey back to Earth, according to state media.
The achievement on Tuesday is a world first and the latest leap for Beijing’s decades-old space programme, which aims to send a crewed mission to the Moon by 2030.
The Xinhua News Agency, citing the China National Space Administration (CNSA), said that the ascender of the Chang’e-6 probe took off at 7:38am local time on Tuesday (23:38 GMT) and entered a preset orbit around the moon.
It described the move as “an unprecedented feat in human lunar exploration history”.
The Chang’e-6 probe was launched last month and its lander touched down on the far side of the Moon on Sunday. It used a drill and robotic arm to dig up soil on and below the Moon’s surface, according to Xinhua.
After successfully gathering its samples, the Chang’e-6 unfurled China’s national flag for the first time on the far side of the Moon, it said.
The agency cited the CNSA as saying that the spacecraft stowed the samples it had gathered in a container inside the ascender of the probe as planned.
[Aljazeera]
China says its uncrewed craft has successfully landed on the far side of the Moon – an unexplored place almost no-one tries to go.
The Chang’e 6 touched down in the South Pole-Aitken Basin at 06:23 Beijing time on Sunday morning (22:23 GMT Saturday), the China National Space Administration (CNSA) said.
Launched on 3 May, the mission aims to collect precious rock and soil from this region for the first time in history. The probe could extract some of the Moon’s oldest rocks from a huge crater on its South Pole.
The landing was fraught with risks, because it is very difficult to communicate with spacecraft once they reach the far side of the Moon. China is the only country to have achieved the feat before, landing its Chang’e-4 in 2019.
After launching from Wenchang Space Launch Center, the Chang’e 6 spacecraft had been orbiting the Moon waiting to land. The lander component of the mission then separated from the orbiter to touch down on the side of the Moon that faces permanently away from Earth.
During the descent, an autonomous visual obstacle avoidance system was used to automatically detect obstacles, with a visible light camera selecting a comparatively safe landing area based on the brightness and darkness of the lunar surface, the CNSA was quoted as saying by state-run Xinhua news agency.
The lander hovered about 100m (328ft) above the safe landing area, and used a laser 3D scanner before a slow vertical descent. The operation was supported by the Queqiao-2 relay satellite, the CNSA said.
Chinese state media described the successful landing as an “historic moment”. The state broadcaster said “applause erupted at the Beijing Aerospace Flight Control Center” when the Chang’e landing craft touched down on the Moon early on Sunday morning.
The lander should spend up to three days gathering materials from the surface in an operation the CNSA said would involve “many engineering innovations, high risks and great difficulty”. “Everyone is very excited that we might get a look at these rocks no-one has ever seen before,” explains Professor John Pernet-Fisher, who specialises in lunar geology at the University of Manchester.
He has analysed other lunar rock brought back on the American Apollo mission and previous Chinese missions. But he says the chance to analyse rock from a completely different area of the Moon could answer fundamental questions about how planets form.
Most of the rocks collected so far are volcanic, similar to what we might find in Iceland or Hawaii. But the material on the far side would have a different chemistry . “It would help us answer those really big questions, like how are planets formed, why do crusts form, what is the origin of water in the solar system?” the professor says.
The mission aims to collect about 2kg (4.4lb) of material using a drill and mechanical arm, according to the CNSA.
The South Pole–Aitken basin, an impact crater, is one of the largest known in the solar system.
From there, the probe could gather material that came from deep inside the lunar mantle – the inner core of the Moon – Prof Pernet-Fisher says.
The Moon’s South Pole is the next frontier in lunar missions – countries are keen to understand the region because there is a good chance it has ice.
The capsule in the last Chinese moon mission, Chang’e 5, brought back soil and rocks in 2020 (BBC)
Access to water would significantly boost the chances of successfully establishing a human base on the Moon for scientific research.
If the mission succeeds, the craft will return to Earth with the precious samples on board a special return capsule.
The material will be kept in special conditions to try to keep it as pristine as possible.
Scientists in China will be given the first chance to analyse the rocks, and later researchers around the world will be able to apply for the opportunity too.
This is the second time China has launched a mission to collect samples from the Moon.
In 2020 Chang’e 5 brought back 1.7kg of material from an area called Oceanus Procellarum on the Moon’s near side.
China is planning three more uncrewed missions this decade as it looks for water on the Moon and investigates setting up a permanent base there.
Beijing’s broader strategy aims to see a Chinese astronaut walk on the moon by around 2030.
The US also aims to put astronauts back on the moon, with Nasa aiming to launch its Artemis 3 mission in 2026.
(BBC)
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