The most common offences committed by employers in the construction, marine and process (CMP) sectors are illegal employment and unacceptable accommodation, said Minister of Manpower Dr Tan See Leng on Monday (2 August).
Dr Tan was responding to parliamentary questions filed by Progress Singapore Party (PSP)’s Non-Constituency Member of Parliament (NCMP) Leong Mun Wai who asked about the types and numbers of violations that the MOM has discovered with regard to recruitment of foreigners in those sectors.
Mr Leong also enquired if the relevant dependency ratio ceiling (DRC) applies to companies that supply labour to the CMP and service sectors.
The DRC is the maximum permitted ratio of foreign workers that can be hired to the total workforce of a company in a stipulated sector.
Dependency Ratio Ceiling (DRC) refers to the maximum permitted ratio of foreign workers to the total workforce that a company in the stipulated sector is allowed to hire.
Dr Tan responded, “Labour supplying of foreign workers by the employer to another company is only allowed within the construction and process sectors and not in the marine sector,” adding that the employer of the foreign workers is still subject to the DRC.
Mr Leong had also asked whether the Ministry of Manpower would consider resuming regular publication of the Employment Agency (EA) Enforcement Digest on the Ministry’s website that contains such information.
To this, Dr Tan noted that the EA Enforcement Digest was introduced in 2016 to share enforcement statistics and common EA infringements with the industry, adding that the figures provided span across the many industries and are not specific to just the CMP sectors.
He said that since 2019, the MOM has engaged the EA industry via small-group sessions involving relevant agencies, and use electronic mailers to the industry such as EA alerts instead of the Digest.
“These have been effective in ground sensing and updating the industry on compliance issues,” Dr Tan iterated.
In his answer, Dr Tan also clarified that companies that supply their own labour to another company are not required to obtain an employment agency license (EA) unless they perform EA work, which is the facilitation of recruitment and hiring of workers by their client companies.
Such works include communicating with jobseekers for the purpose of processing employment applications, collating resume to help jobseekers establish a relationship with potential employers, submitting work pass applications on behalf of jobseekers or employers and placing jobseekers with an employer.
The most common infringements within the EA industry are contravening EA license conditions and performing EA activities without an EA license, according to Dr Tan.
