The assistant secretary-general of Progress Singapore Party (PSP) Leong Mun Wai answered a question asked by the Japanese media in Japanese itself during a press conference held on Tuesday (14 July).
Mr Leong, who contested in West Coast GRC, addressed a question raised by the Japanese media about the PMETs (professionals, managers, executives and technicians) in Singapore.
The question was asked to him after the party’s secretary-general Dr Tan Cheng Bock encouraged the media to ask Mr Leong the question in Japanese.
In his reply, Mr Leong said: “There are 400,000 foreign talents in Singapore now (taking up PMET jobs). Among these, I think you can cut down about 10 percent of them.”
He added, “Basically the Singapore government is saying that without Employment Pass (EP), the overall competitiveness will be affected. But we don’t agree. We think a portion of EP and S Pass (SP) can be reduced. For instance, if you reduce 10 percent of these EP and SP, then tens of thousands of job opportunities can be freed up.”
“On this, once we enter the parliament, we will proactively push our cases to the Government.”
In 1979, Mr Leong was awarded an Overseas Merit Scholarship by the Singapore Government to study Economics in Hitotsubashi University in Japan.
Yesterday’s press conference was conducted to unveil the two members of PSP who will be taking up the Non-Constituency Member of Parliament (NCMP) seats in Parliament following the party’s performance in GE2020.
The two who will be filling up the NCMP seats are Mr Leong and Hazel Poa.
Although the party has been openly against the NCMP scheme, Dr Tan said that they selected Ms Poa and Mr Leong specifically for the post given that the seats won’t be offered to another political party.
He noted, “Even if we don’t take it up, I read the new ruling, you draw lots among the five of us to pick the two. Make sure you don’t pass the NCMP to another political party. So we decided we will put up two people.”
In last week’s election, the PSP West Coast GRC team secured 48.31 per cent of the vote, which is the highest vote share of the candidates who were not elected in GE2020.