Skills and Workforce Development Agency Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

2.51 pm

The Minister for Manpower (Dr Tan See Leng): Mr Deputy Speaker, I move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

At Budget 2026, the Prime Minister announced that we will merge SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG) and Workforce Singapore (WSG) into a new Statutory Board jointly overseen by the Ministry of Education (MOE) and the Ministry of Manpower (MOM).

A decade ago, we restructured the Workforce Development Agency into two agencies. WSG remained under MOM to focus on strengthening employment facilitation, services and programmes. SSG moved under MOE to enable it to work more closely with our institutes of higher learning (IHLs) to drive the SkillsFuture movement.

Since then, both agencies have come a long way in providing individuals and employers with more comprehensive support. SSG has built a vibrant continuing education and training (CET) landscape, ramping up offerings by private training providers and establishing the IHLs as a key pillar in the ecosystem.

Through the SkillsFuture Credit, SSG has mainstreamed the culture of lifelong learning in Singapore. The number of individuals participating in SSG-supported training each year has grown from 418,000 in 2016 to more than 600,000 in 2025. This is about one-fifth of the resident workforce. SSG has also introduced the SkillsFuture Level-Up Programme, extending significant support for mid-career Singaporeans to pursue a substantive skills reboot.

WSG has expanded its reach in supporting individuals and employers through employment facilitation, reskilling and job redesign. The number of individuals assisted by WSG and its partners has tripled from 127,000 in 2017 to 355,000 in 2025. WSG helped many Singaporeans to overcome episodes of economic slowdown, such as the recent COVID-19 pandemic. WSG has also expanded the range of support, with the introduction of the Polaris programme to support individuals in long-term career planning in an increasingly fast-changing labour market.

The 2016 restructuring substantially delivered what it set out to do. But over the last 10 years, the world around us has shifted, and the next 10 years will certainly not in any way resemble the last 10.

First, technology is advancing at an unprecedented pace. ChatGPT did not exist five years ago. The capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) that we see today would have been science fiction in 2016. But the technological wave is now here, it is upon us and it is picking up speed and momentum.

Second, geopolitical shocks are reshaping the global economy in ways that were difficult to imagine a decade ago. Since 2016, we have lived through a global pandemic that shuttered economies overnight. Wars in Europe and now in the Middle East have upended energy markets and a rupture in US-China relations is redrawing the map of global trade and investment. The more predictable world that our 2016 framework rested on is now gone.

Third, demographic change continues relentlessly. In 2015, roughly one in eight Singapore citizens was aged 65 and above. Today, it is more than one in five, crossing the threshold of a super-aged society. By 2030, it will be one in four.

While we had seen this demographic change coming, we are now feeling its impact more acutely. This further sharpens the imperative for us to strengthen the career longevity of our workforce. In short, we live in a different world from 10 years ago. What worked in the past decade will need significant transformation, to be more predictive, to be more anticipatory, as well as be more responsive and targeted moving forward.

To stay ahead of change, we must therefore be able to continuously adapt with the times as well as with new realities. That is why we are bringing SSG and WSG together, combining the strengths that both agencies have built up over the past decade into a single upgraded engine for skills and workforce development, ready to support Singaporeans and employers to navigate an age of unprecedented change.

We will call the new agency the "Skills and Workforce Development Agency" (SWDA). The name reflects the agency's mission to develop and to advance Singapore's human potential. SWDA will focus on better serving individuals and employers and better partnering the broader ecosystem of providers of career and employment services as well as training.

Let me elaborate on each in turn.

First, individuals. In the world we live in today, many of us are worried about whether our job will still exist in time to come; whether we can find another job with the same pay and seniority if we lose our jobs; whether our skills built up over an entire career may become obsolete faster than we can keep up.

These are legitimate and valid concerns. But our collective response, how do we respond to it, must be one of proactive action, not passive anxiety.

SWDA will enable Singaporeans to take purposeful action to stay adaptable, to stay resilient in a fast-changing and uncertain economy. It will support you to build up your career health consistently, strengthening immunity to disruptions and instilling agility to seize new opportunities. It will help you to make better training and career decisions in support of your longer-term career goals. It will help you to bounce back after facing career setbacks. And SWDA will do all of these by bringing the capabilities of SSG and WSG together, integrating them to deliver timely and trusted career and skills insights with smarter training and career services, and do that even more than before.

SWDA will build a more comprehensive offering of tools, services and programmes to journey with individuals through different life stages. For fresh graduates navigating your first steps in the job market, SWDA will expand opportunities for you to gain real work experience and secure your footing.

We will partner companies to provide attachment and traineeship programmes that will give you concrete work experience and exposure, which will then create pathways for you to enter growth sectors with strong manpower demand.

We will develop new or expand existing programmes, like the BioPharma Talent Builder programme, which equips you to take on jobs in leading biomedical firms. For those still uncertain about your career trajectory after graduation, SWDA will offer career guidance to help you identify potential career pathways in line with your aspirations, your goals and your values.

For mid-career workers, whether facing mid-career stagnations, feeling apprehensive about being displaced, encountering retrenchments, or returning to work after a caregiving break or simply planning ahead, the hardest part is often not knowing where to start and when to take the first step.

SWDA will enhance career guidance, will enhance job matching and reskilling support to provide more transition pathways. This includes expanding partnerships with private career service providers and employer networks to deliver more resources for you to navigate the labour market, help you make personalised career plans and connect to new prospects.

In partnership with the Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech), we have rolled out an AI advisor called Career Kaki that serves as a personal digital concierge for careers and skills, available at any time of the day to help those who are unsure of their next steps. SWDA will continue to expand and improve on these service offerings.

For senior workers who have much to contribute with your networks and your experience, and if you are keen to do so, SWDA is part of the Tripartite Workgroup on Senior Employment that is developing an integrated approach to support longer careers. Working with progressive companies and human resource professionals, SWDA will develop and will scale solutions for longer, multi-stage careers and promote age-inclusive jobs and workplaces.

Members of the House, preparing our workforce for AI is a key priority. At Budget 2026, the Prime Minister announced the latest addition to SWDA's offering – free access to premium AI tools for those who take up selected training courses. This is one of the priorities that SWDA will deliver in the coming months, as part of a holistic suite of efforts to help workers future-proof their skills and strengthen career health in an AI-enabled economy.

SWDA will offer individuals a more seamless journey through an integrated touchpoint. Instead of navigating programmes offered by two agencies, individuals will now have a single interface to the full suite of career guidance, skills training and job matching support offered by SWDA. It will offer an enhanced digital experience, with AI-powered personalised career guidance, recommendations of in-demand training courses, and exploratory tools for employment opportunities based on one's portfolio of skills.

Second, the other part of our equation, which is a big one – and that is for employers, SWDA can provide support for their recruitment efforts. For those employers' business looking to fill job vacancies, SWDA can help to accelerate hiring of suitable candidates from its pool of jobseekers and trainees, leveraging the Careers and Skills Passport as a common verified information source on the work experience and the skillsets of candidates.

SWDA will also be a stronger partner to employers in workforce development. By unifying skills intelligence with labour market data, it will give businesses sharper, more actionable insights and modalities to support skills-first workforce planning, hiring and internal mobility.

It will support the delivery of training that is more relevant to the needs of employers. SWDA's suite of programmes can help employers reskill employees to transfer to new job roles, hence, expanding the pool of available candidates beyond external hires.

Beyond recruitment and training, SWDA will support employers through the challenges of deeper workforce transformation. As AI continues to reshape job roles and business models, SWDA will provide employers with integrated support across workforce restructuring, job redesign and capability development.

Through the Enterprise Workforce Transformation Package, SWDA will bring together workforce transformation schemes from SSG and WSG in an integrated enterprise digital portal to support holistic workforce transformation.

The recently implemented SkillsFuture Workforce Development Grant (Job Redesign+), is a key resource that employers can tap on to redesign job roles, build internal capabilities and adopt workforce tech solutions for workforce transformation.

In the second half of this year, employers will be able to invest in workforce development with greater ease through the redesigned SkillsFuture Enterprise Credit.

Overall, the aim is to help businesses plan more effectively, hire more confidently and adapt their workforce more quickly to evolving needs.

This will build on ongoing work. In the Financial Services sector, WSG, the Monetary Authority of Singapore and Institute of Banking and Finance launched a Jobs Transformation Map (JTM) on Generative AI for Financial Services, partnering 11 financial institutions to unpack what AI adoption means for specific job roles and showcase the opportunities for employees that job redesign and reskilling can potentially bring.

The JTM showed how finance and insurance companies can reshape roles in customer service, relationship management and risk management, improving productivity and enabling employees to move up the value chain. It also highlighted new job opportunities in areas such as AI governance. SWDA will bring this approach to support transformation in other sectors, including adoption of AI and managing its impact on jobs.

In sum, whether you are dealing with urgent manpower issues for the here and now, or growing your team to expand operations, or even restructuring your workforce to support a pivot in your business, SWDA will work with you, will partner you to transform your business and your workforce.

Third, SWDA will strengthen the ecosystem of service providers of career and employment services and training. SSG has already built up a strong training sector over the past decade. SWDA will bolster other parts of this ecosystem that serve workers and employers on their career as well as their workforce needs. This includes recruitment agencies, staffing agencies, career coaching and career guidance providers, human resources (HR) consultancy, technology firms, online job portals and the like.

SWDA will work with industry to raise the quality standards, improve accessibility and develop new solutions by spurring both innovation and collaboration.

Our goal ultimately is a vibrant private sector, complemented with public employment services and programmes that will be a catalyst and enabler for broad-based workforce transformation and adaptation, amidst the rapid changes in our labour market.

This work has already started. Last year, we launched the Alliance for Action on Advancing Career and Employment Services (AfA-ACES) comprising representatives from this ecosystem. Nine pilots are already underway, testing innovative models targeting under-served groups, including fresh graduates, families with complex needs and those returning to the labour force after a period of absence. There are also pilots to work with employers to design more flexible work models and adopt skills-based practices.

These pilots may give rise to new programmes and services. More importantly, through these pilots, we are discovering together the strengths of our ecosystem today and the opportunities to take it to the next level tomorrow.

Later this year, the AfA-ACES will release its recommendations, which will chart plans to transform the ecosystem to serve individuals and employers more effectively.

Mr Deputy Speaker, beyond the structures and services that SWDA will put in place, our deeper ambition is to shift the culture and the mindsets around careers and learning. This is something that I will appeal to everyone because it requires a whole-of-society approach.

In an era where AI is rapidly transforming job requirements at a pace that no single institution can fully anticipate, lifelong learning and career health must become the norm and it must become a practical reality.

It must be something that Singaporeans can and should invest in and take ownership of throughout their entire working life and is not a resource that you can turn to only when the circumstances compel you to do so.

Employers too should continuously invest in your employees' career health so that your employees are well-equipped to contribute to the success of your business. The aspiration is to build a Singapore workforce that meets change with confidence, one that is oriented not merely towards managing disruption, but towards seizing the opportunities that come with it. So, not one that is responsive and reactive but one that is preemptive and proactive.

SWDA will work with our tripartite partners to catalyse this shift, building on the SkillsFuture movement and the Career Health SG initiative under it. This entails talking about lifelong learning and career health regularly, including at the workplace, internalising it and promoting good career health habits.

This requires training and career guidance to be very accessible to the broad middle. Our assurance to every worker and every employer is this: work with us, and we will walk with you. The Government and our tripartite partners will be with you, every step of the way.

Mr Deputy Speaker, the priorities I shared set out the mission of SWDA. To give effect to them, we have tabled the SWDA Bill. I will now outline its key components.

Part 1 of the Bill introduces the terms used in the Bill.

Part 2 establishes SWDA as a Statutory Board and describes the functions and powers of SWDA. SWDA's functions will cover the existing functions of SSG and WSG, and extend them to include promoting the development of career and employment services and training in Singapore.

Parts 3 to 6 set out SWDA's governance structures and requirements, which are aligned with the Public Sector (Governance) Act 2018. They cover the membership, the appointment and decision-making procedures of the SWDA Board, as well as personnel and financial matters.

Parts 7 and 8 set out the enforcement powers necessary for the administration of the Bill and its general provisions, including the power to make regulations and to issue codes of practice or guidelines for providers of career and employment services and training.

Part 9 provides for the transfer of undertakings and employees from WSG and SSG to SWDA. Employees of WSG and SSG will be transferred to SWDA on terms that are no less favourable than their present ones.

We have been closely engaging and supporting all officers, to ensure that both their well-being and career aspirations are well-cared for amidst this transition.

The refreshed mission of SWDA will provide new growth opportunities and career pathways for staff. We will also provide opportunities for officers to equip themselves for new job roles, so that no one will inadvertently fall through the cracks.

Parts 10 and 11 repeal the SSG Act and the WSG Act and make consequential and related amendments to other Acts. The key amendments are to the Private Education Act and Skills Development Levy Act, which will be administered by SWDA.

Mr Deputy Speaker, Singapore has consistently demonstrated a willingness to adapt its institutions to meet the demands of each new era. The establishment of the Workforce Development Agency in 2003, its subsequent restructuring into SSG and WSG in 2016, and now the creation of SWDA reflect the same underlying commitment: to invest in our people and to ensure that our institutions remain best positioned to do so.

The Bill presented today sets out the legislative framework to establish the SWDA. If the Bill is passed, SWDA will be established in the third quarter of 2026 as a cornerstone in answering our workforce challenges in the decade ahead. It will support every Singaporean across a career that may be long, multi-staged, varied and non-linear.

It will help employers navigate transformation and meet their workforce needs with greater confidence. It will bring coherence and quality to the full ecosystem of career and employment services and training that our workers and businesses can depend on.

At its heart, the Bill affirms a conviction that this House has long held – that every Singaporean, at every stage of his or her working life, deserves support to grow, to adapt and to contribute to the nation's continued success. With this, Mr Deputy Speaker, I seek to move.

Question proposed.

Mr Deputy Speaker: Ms Yeo Wan Ling.

3.17 pm

Ms Yeo Wan Ling (Punggol): Mr Deputy Speaker, just last night, a regular at my Meet-the-People Sessions shared that she has started taking AI courses on her own. She is in her 50s and has worked as an HR administrator for over 20 years. She told me, "Ms Yeo, I am not worried about robots taking my job, I just want to know that there is something thinking about what comes next for me."

That quiet anxiety is something we all hear often on the ground: not panic, not resistance, just a very human need to know that someone is watching out for you.

Mr Deputy Speaker, that is why this Bill matters. I support it and want to speak to what it must achieve, not as policy, but as lived experience. I declare my role as the Executive Secretary of the National Transport Workers Union, the Assistant Secretary-General of the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) and Chairman of the Manpower Government Parliamentary Committee (GPC). And these are the lenses that I am using to speak on.

Ten years ago, we established SSG and reconstituted WSG. One focused on skills, the other on jobs. That model served us well. But the world of work has shifted. Today, careers are longer but no longer linear. The idea of one employer, one skillset, one trajectory belongs to an earlier generation.

At the same time, AI is shortening the half-life of skills. What took years to build can be reshaped within a few. So, the challenge is no longer just training workers or helping them find jobs. It is ensuring that training leads to jobs, jobs lead to wage growth and transformation produces gains that are shared with workers.

That is the gap this Bill is designed to close. The formation of the SWDA is a strategic reset, bringing skills and careers into one continuous journey.

As Manpower GPC Chairman, I recently visited three companies with my fellow GPC members to understand how tech-enabled, AI-powered business transformation and workforce upskilling are actually playing out on the ground, in real workplaces, with real workers.

I want to share what I saw, because these visits were not just informative. They were instructive. Each company showed a different face of Singapore's workforce and, together, they speak to why SWDA's mandate is as important as it is.

Our first visit was to SMRT Corporation. At SMRT, I witnessed what happens when a large employer commits fully to workforce transformation as a cultural and operational mission. SMRT has institutionalised the kaizen philosophy – a Japanese yet universal concept of continuous, incremental improvement – as a unifying mindset across all levels of the organisation. This is not a top-down directive. It is a shared way of working. Layered onto this, SMRT has adopted technology to unlock operational efficiencies – managing worker fatigue, boosting safety through predictive maintenance and redesigning workflows to reduce the physical burden on staff.

And who benefits most from this? Their older workers. Workers who have spent decades on the job, who know every quirk of the system, every subtle sound that signals a problem and now working smarter. Following re-training and job redesign, productivity improved. And critically, their wages have increased.

This is the promise of how continuous learning ensures that technology is done right: not replacing experienced workers but augmenting them. Giving them tools that honour their expertise, extending their working lives and rewarding their commitment.

I call on SWDA to support more companies, like SMRT, to ensure that workplace cultures support lifelong learning and to reward workers when they walk the talk.

Our second visit took us to FairPrice's Store of Tomorrow at Punggol Coast Mall – Singapore's first generative-AI-powered supermarket. And Mr Deputy Speaker, as a Member of Parliament for Punggol group representation constituency (GRC), I felt a particular sense of pride that this innovation is rooted right here in our Punggol community.

What I want to highlight is not the AI, impressive as it is, but how the transformation was designed. Staff was not presented with a finished product and told to adapt. They were involved from the beginning – shaping service design, store navigation, check-out and backend operations. Customers, too, were part of this co-creation.

Many of these frontline staff are women, including mid-career returnees who came back to work after years of caregiving, not the typical profile technology is designed for. Yet because FairPrice chose to design with them rather than for them, the result is a system that works for staff and customers alike.

The lesson is clear. When workers are treated as co-creators rather than recipients of change, transformation is smoother, adoption is faster and outcomes are better. SWDA must champion co-design not as a nice-to-have, but as a defining feature of how Singapore approaches workforce transformation.

We know AI will reshape our workforce and our workplaces, but how it unfolds in practice will depend on pioneers on the ground. My Manpower GPC colleagues and I saw this firsthand at FairPrice – a company willing to reimagine not just its own operations, but the broader retail cluster. They have taken bold steps to reimagine not just their own operations, but the broader retail cluster, helping workers and Singaporeans begin to see and experience what an AI-enabled workplace could look like.

So, my call to SWDA is this: support more of such companies. Enable them to experiment, to learn and to lead to boldly go where no one has gone before. And in doing so, light the way for their sectors and for Singapore's future of work.

Mr Deputy Speaker, our Manpower GPC's third visit was to Chye Thiam Maintenance and I would like to dwell into this visit because it speaks to a segment of our workforce that is too often less visible in conversations about workplace transformation and that is of our lower wage workers and senior workers.

Chye Thiam Maintenance is a homegrown company many of us would recognise from the orange and yellow vehicles that keep our estates, malls and highways clean. From a small family outfit, they have grown into a team of 3,500 strong. Over the decades, they have continued investing in technology and machinery and at every stage, their workers moved forward with these changes, not out of them. In the past two years, they introduced robo-sweepers and autonomous service vehicles. But the real story is what came with it – job redesign, skills upgrading and new roles.

Workers trained to operate autonomous equipment now receive AV allowances, recognising their higher skills and responsibilities they carry. This is a small but important signal, that when work changes, we recognise and reward it differently. And the result is clear. Technology did not replace workers. It raised the quality of jobs, creating pathways for seniors and lower-wage workers to move into safer, more skilled and better-paying jobs.

For Chye Thiam Maintenance, embracing technology also brought in more business and with it, the ability to hire more and uplift more. This is the virtuous cycle we want to see: when innovation drives both enterprise growth and worker progression. Chye Thiam Maintenance is also an accredited training organisation, working with our agencies to build structured training programmes tailored to their workforce. This is important.

What they have done is to build a wage and career ladder with support and guidance from our agencies. As a local company, Chye Thiam Maintenance shows us that with the right intent and support from the Government, transformation can be inclusive – not by asking workers to simply "keep up", but by enabling them to move forward.

Mr Deputy Speaker, as we look toward the work of the SWDA, it must support more local enterprises and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) on their journeys and scale support as our local companies grow from SMEs to large local enterprises, so that productivity gains translate into more better jobs, better wages and, above all, greater dignity at work.

Across all three companies, a common theme emerges. These employers adopted AI and technology to transform their businesses without leaving their workers behind. They built a culture of employee stake-holding in transformation and one of lifelong learning. Supported by grants and partnerships, they took on the responsibility of designing and delivering training. And their workers came out on the other side with better conditions, new skills and wage growth. That is the model exactly that Singapore needs to scale.

The merger of SSG and WSG must lead to bold steps, not incremental ones, to streamline programme delivery, simplify grant and funding administration, and take a genuinely customer-centric approach that puts real worker and employer outcomes right at the centre.

I am confident that our ecosystem partners stand ready to work alongside SWDA in this – the Tripartite Jobs Council, our trade associations and chambers, employment agencies, and our unions, of course. They are already embedded in companies and communities across Singapore. They have the trust of workers and employers built up over years. SWDA must build on this, not bypass it.

I want to make this call specifically: SWDA must establish regular, ongoing engagement with these stakeholders not just at the point of policy design, but continuously. The world of work is changing faster than any policy cycle. Policies that are not continuously grounded become policies that do not work.

SWDA is also well-positioned to drive research to develop a data-driven view of jobs of the future and to deliver design grants that supercharge company transformation. This research role is important and I welcome it, particularly as companies and sectors embark on their starship enterprise reimagination journeys with their workers. Indeed, to go boldly where no one else has gone before.

But in implementing transformation, SWDA must be a champion of a human-centric, worker-centric approach. This will make the difference between transformation that works for people, and transformation that works for productivity metrics alone.

Mr Deputy Speaker, let me put faces to what success should look like and would look like, if SWDA gets it right. These are composite sketches drawn from real ground conversations. I have changed names.

Joanne, not her real name, spent nearly a decade out of the workforce, first caring for her young children, then for her mother who had a stroke. When she finally could return to work, she came to see me. She was 46. She had real skills, genuine experience and she was ready. But her retirement savings were depleted from years without Central Provident Fund (CPF) contributions. She had a caregiving gap in her resume and she needed to undergo re-training but had no financial buffer to sustain her through it.

If SWDA gets this right, Joanne would be supported by a structured return-to-work pathway for caregivers – one that bundles caregiver respite support to free her time for training, a training allowance to sustain her through the programme and a CPF top-up in her first month back at work.

Our NTUC's C U Back @ Work programme has shown us that this model works. Since we launched it in 2023, we have close to 1,000 CUBbies in the programme, and in 2025, we expanded it to professional, manager and executive (PME) roles, including accounting and office administration. SWDA must build on this, not reinvent it. And it must make these pathways permanent and accessible to all the Joannes across the whole entire island, not just those few lucky ones who were lucky enough to find their way to us.

Sakthi – not his real name, but he will recognise himself – is a bus captain. He has been on the road for over 20 years. He takes pride in his work and his passengers know him by name. But here is what most commuters do not know. His lunch break is 25 minutes. Between runs, some breaks are as short as six minutes and he starts his day at 4.30 am. He can drive up to 16 runs in a day. And at 60 years old, the fatigue is real and it can be a safety matter, not just only a welfare one.

If SWDA gets this right, AI-informed fatigue monitoring and job redesign can enable Sakthi to work a smarter shift structure, one that is informed by data about when fatigue peaks, that keeps him safe, keeps his passengers safe and keeps him economically active and contributing for longer. Older workers are experienced contributors who deserve workplaces designed with them in mind and not around them.

David, not his real name, was a mid-career IT professional when his company restructured. He was retrenched at 52. While he searched for work, he turned to platform driving to keep his family afloat. The flexibility suited him. The income helped. But now, two years in, he reads the news about autonomous vehicles (AVs) and he comes to me with a question that I have heard more than once: "Ms Yeo, if the technology matures, what will belong of me?"

He wants to reskill. He knows the window is open, but he cannot afford to stop driving. His family needs the income now, not after he has completed the training programme.

If SWDA gets it right, David would have the access to structured financial support that allows him to transition gradually, to drive part-time while undertaking a credentialled reskilling programme connected to real employment pipelines in sectors where his original IT background, will open doors.

Joanne, Sakthi and David, they are not unusual cases. They walk into my Meet-the-People Sessions. They sit across from me at kopi chit-chats. They come to our union dialogues. They are the reason this Bill matters, and the reason I hope we will measure SWDA's success not just by the programmes launched or grants disbursed, but by the number of real Singaporeans whose working lives genuinely change for the better.

Mr Deputy Speaker, 10 years ago, we built the foundations. Today, we are building the integration. And 10 years from now, I hope we will look back on this Bill as the moment Singapore chose to ensure that our next bound of growth is one that every worker can be part of.

The Labour Movement stands ready and our unions, our Tripartite Jobs Council will continue to walk the ground and we will hold SWDA and ourselves to the standard of making transformation inclusive, practical and human-centred.

To my resident at the Meet-the-People Session who just wants to know that someone is thinking about what comes next for her, I want to say: This is exactly what we are here to do today. I support this Bill.

Mr Deputy Speaker: Mr Gerald Giam.

3.33 pm

Mr Gerald Giam Yean Song (Aljunied): I declare my interest as the owner and director of a company that provides software to training providers.

Mr Deputy Speaker, the SWDA Bill officially consolidates career and employment services with skills training under a single administrative mandate. This is a welcome integration.

First, it has the potential to eliminate institutional silos. This lowers the risk of skills development and training occurring without an active alignment to available job frequencies.

Second, it could prevent fragmented journeys of jobseekers, reducing the friction for Singaporeans. Who previously had to navigate disparate digital platforms and physical agency locations for career coaching and skills upgrading.

Third, it could resolve data administrative silos by integrating the training records formerly held by Skills Future Singapore, with employment and placement records held by WSG. This integration has the potential to empower career coaches to provide holistic data-driven interventions.

The Bill fundamentally reverses the 2016 policy decision to bifurcate the then Workforce Development Agency into SSG and WSG.

The Minister just explained that WSG may remain under MOM to focus on strengthening employment facilitation services and programmes, while SSG moved under MOE to enable it to work more closely with our IHLs to drive the skills future movement.

It is not clear to me why WDA had to split in order to achieve this. How will the Government measure the success of this merger compared to the 2016 separation? Specifically, what key performance indicators (KPIs) will the new agency use to meaningfully tackle structural issues in labour mobility and skills development?

The new agency's functions straddle both education and manpower. Yet, no current political office holder spans both Ministries. Does the Prime Minister intend to appoint a bridging political office holder, such as a Minister of State for Manpower and Education?

The Bill's Explanatory Note states that the Bill will not involve the Government in any extra financial expenditure. But surely, the cost of this re-merger will not be zero. Could the Minister enumerate the actual cost associated with this restructuring, including the budget set aside for rebranding efforts, the updating of physical and digital collateral as well as the integration of various IT and payroll systems, among other things, across the merging entities? Would the Minister share how this compare to the costs associated with separating these agencies in 2016?

The Bill specifies that the agency will provide for or facilitate the provision of career advisory and employment assistance services. Would the SWDA be providing job search assistance directly under this new integrated agency model?

Currently, the Government relies heavily on third parties, such as the Employment and Employability Institute (e2i) and other private career matching providers. If the SWDA were to directly provide these services, it would be able to leverage its access to MOM data regarding labour market mismatches and real time hiring trends to adapt assistance in a more timely fashion to rapid economic shifts. How would the Government ensure performance accountability of the job search assistance provided by these external partners?

Job search assistance should not merely involve resume touch-ups and pointing job seekers to employment portals. Will the Government commit to a more intensive assistance in the job search process, particularly for those who have experienced persistent structural unemployment despite their most earnest efforts?

Let me set the scene. Today, many jobseekers apply for dozens of jobs daily without customising their resumes to the specific job descriptions. In parallel, organisations utilise automated tracking systems that filter applications strictly by their degree of match with the job description, sometimes discarding all applications did that that do not meet at least a 90% keyword match. Consequently, many qualified applicants may not get a call-up for the interview.

Will SWDA require job assistance programmes to guide job seekers on such technical skills? Will SWDA officers take on a more active role in bridging the gap between employer needs and candidate profiles? For instance, if the agency identifies a candidate whose profile closely matches a job description, will officers proactively pitch this candidate to the employer and advocate for them to be considered for an interview? While the onus ultimately remains on the candidate to prove their worth during the interview, this active matching by the agency would at least help jobseekers get their foot in the door.

Job assistance programmes should also actively bridge skills gaps in networking and help jobseekers leverage professional connections. Such skills are critically important and often not taught in formal schooling.

The Bill in clause 68 specifies the transfer of properties, rights and liabilities, which inherently includes the vast network of educational initiatives and career guidance programmes. Students should be exposed to different careers earlier, ideally starting at lower secondary level when they will be choosing their GCE "O" and "N" level subjects. This early intervention will steer students away from simply settling for subjects or courses they have no genuine interest in because they do not know any better. Would the SWDA work directly with schools to provide systematic and regular career guidance or exposure to students? This would shift the burden of career guidance away from teachers and allow students to have some exposure to industry experts as they decide on what career best works for their individual goals and talents. This would not only lead to better personal outcomes but also yield better long-term workforce outcomes.

To complement this early intervention, will the Government encourage university and polytechnic admissions officers to further expand their quotas for aptitude-based admissions? We must shift the admissions waiting towards an applicant's demonstrated passion and aptitude for a specific field, rather than relying too heavily on relative academic grade cut-offs.

Furthermore, will the Government work with the IHLs to afford students greater flexibility to make mid-stream switches in their educational journeys without the fear of having to start from scratch? This will go some way in creating a workforce of the future that is adaptable, brave and agile. Ultimately, these measures will minimise the systemic waste of public and private resources that occurs when graduates abandon courses and careers they were never genuinely interested in pursuing.

Next, I turn to the harmonisation with other partners.

First, economic planning. While the Bill successfully merges functions that currently sit in MOM and MOE, the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) remains an underlying driver that sets the industry transformation maps (ITMs). The agency has been described as a job skills integrator. However, the roadmap for our industries is set by the ITMs under MTI. Will the Minister explain how this new agency will coordinate work with MTI to ensure that it harmonises its ITMs with training curricula in real time? Will the Minister be able to address the potential risks that by merging MOM and MOE functions, we are simply creating a new larger silo that is disconnected from MTI's strategic planning?

Secondly, the Community Development Councils (CDCs) have launched the Jobs Nearby @ CDC initiative to help Singaporeans find jobs closer to home. Would the agency be tracking the performance of this initiative and help train the job ambassadors?

Mr Deputy Speaker, good intentions do not survive without good measurement. Without clear published performance indicators, this merger risks the same fate as the 2016 separation – celebrated at the inception, reversed a decade later.

I would therefore suggest the Ministry consider the following KPIs for the agency as a starting framework to ensure better accountability.

First, the proportion of public training subsidies going to courses that yield documented employment outcomes within six months. Public expenditure must be rigorously tracked against its economic purpose.

We must move beyond simply tracking whether a jobseeker found any employment. The agency should expand the existing training quality and outcomes measurement surveys to measure whether workers are actively applying the newly acquired competencies in their roles six months after they complete the course. By doing so, we ensure that every public dollar spent genuinely contributes to a successful job placement or career advancement. SWDA should be required to publish these outcome-based figures annually.

Second, the percentage of subsidised training enrolments in courses mapped to documented Shortage Occupation List occupations. Parliament should be able to see year-on-year whether the public's training dollars are flowing towards gaps our economy has already documented.

Third, median time to employment following SWDA-assisted job searches, broken down by age band, professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMETs) versus non-PMET status and by individual service providers. The Government now publishes aggregate figures for these. These aggregated figures will better hold the agency and its service providers to account. These are not novel metrics. They are the logical extension of data that SWDA will already hold. The integration the Bill promises makes these metrics achievable. The question is whether the Government is prepared to track and publish them.

Mr Deputy Speaker, ultimately, this merger must amount to more than just a mere reshuffling of bureaucratic boxes. Administrative neatness means little to the displaced mid-career worker stuck in a job search black hole or the young student pressured into an educational path they have no passion for. The true test of the SWDA will not be how smoothly it integrates its backend systems, but its courage to embrace transparent KPIs, its willingness to proactively champion our job seekers and its agility to move at the speed of our economy. If we are reversing a decade's old policy in the name of deeper synergy, the Government must ensure that this synergy actually translates into tangible, measurable resilience for Singaporean workers. Sir, notwithstanding the concerns I raised, I support the Bill.

Mr Deputy Speaker: Order. I propose to take a break now. I suspend the Sitting and will take the Chair at 4.10 pm.

Sitting accordingly suspended

at 3.45 pm until 4.10 pm.

Sitting resumed at 4.10 pm.

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

Skills and Workforce Development Agency Bill

Debate resumed.

Mr Speaker: Mr Patrick Tay.

4.10 pm

Mr Patrick Tay Teck Guan (Pioneer): Mr Speaker, Sir, I rise in support of the Bill. Integrating WSG and SSG strengthens the effectiveness of Singapore's workforce and skills development ecosystem, and attests to the Government's ability and agility in responding to change in our labour landscape.

Firstly, I would like to thank the Minister for his opening speech earlier for reassuring us that workers, staff and employees in both WSG and SSG will not be adversely affected by this merger.

Last year marked 10 years since the national SkillsFuture movement was launched to promote lifelong learning as a national priority. In this House, I called for a timely review of services delivered across WSG, SSG and other arms like the IHLs and NTUC's e2i, to reduce duplication of resources and provide even more seamless end-to-end support for workers, jobseekers and employers. I am glad that this call has been heard.

The creation of SWDA responds to trends like increased geopolitical and economic volatility, new technologies and diverse career aspirations. Rationalising the ambits of WSG and SSG provides a strategic window to critically assess what has worked and what has not. Identifying where the gaps are, who are the underserved and what are the bold steps we need to take to ensure our workers stay afloat, abreast and ahead.

To this end, I offer three priorities for the next bound of Singapore's skills and workforce development ecosystem, what I call the three "highs", not "Hi" but "high" – high speed, high quality and high returns.

First, high speed. This refers to speed-to-market for training curriculum when new skills become in-demand and career transition programmes when industries face sunset. In a fast-changing and highly competitive global labour landscape, the earliest bird catches the best worm.

SWDA will need to accelerate operational speed by reducing administrative burden, sharing data analytics and consolidating support packages into a "one-stop shop" experience for anyone, anytime and anywhere. The success of this vision will depend on faster rather than slower clearance chains with joint oversight.

SWDA must also make clear to employers that delays in early job redesign and training investment will compound real costs through widening skills gap, tardy transformation and weakened competition positions, while early adopters who step up will reap strong gains and benefits.

This can be made possible by closer integration of training design with company training and transformation committees to ensure a smoother training-to-work journey for in-service workers. Furthermore, proactively undertaking job redesign can also ensure more immediate fit for freshly trained new hires, especially mid-career trainees whose freshly acquired skills, and track-record experience in critical thinking and business problem solving present good value to prospective employers.

High speed also in absorbing shocks, is also key during times of geopolitical and economic volatility, which are set to persist. The Government has done this well, for example, through the Singapore Economic Resilience Taskforce and Homefront Crisis Ministerial Committee. However, I urge that more can be done to support impacted workers.

Business restructuring and AI-driven disruption have slowed hiring and growth of entry-level jobs. Graduates across our autonomous universities (AUs), including our private education institutions in the past year, secured fewer full-time positions across the board. Will SWDA consider launching an extended and higher-value iteration of the GRaduate Industry Traineeships (GRIT) programme, with opportunities ranging from one to two years and with monthly traineeship allowances on par with starting salaries?

As only over 3,000 involuntarily unemployed workers received at least one payout, out of the 10,000 SkillsFuture Jobseeker Support Scheme (JSS) applications received and despite 60,000 workers expected to be eligible for the scheme every year, will SWDA consider reviewing the scheme's salary cap, criteria for involuntary unemployment and service delivery experience? For example, job matching and career guidance services can be integrated with the JS scheme to fulfil the vision of being a "one-stop shop" for involuntarily unemployed workers.

Following the European Union, South Korea and Vietnam's introduction of AI legislation and explicit classification of employment-related AI as "high risk", will SWDA require responsible practices, such as anti-discrimination risk assessments, human oversight and right-to-know transparency, when deploying AI-enabled human resources technology under the Workforce Development Grant (Job Redesign+) programme?

Second, high quality. Measures have been recently rolled out to raise the quality of training providers seeking course approvals and funding, including requiring more practice hours and suspension for those with low ratings. These are steps in the right direction. However, we must also be mindful that what is considered useful is different to every learner. Apart from audit compliance and learner satisfaction, high-quality job-related learning must mean industry application or validation, such as employer co-design, work-integrated learning, like attachments or paid-per-task opportunities, portfolio building and access to mentorship or networking. These increase potential employment outcomes for learners while allowing employers to assess candidates with lower risk.

For non-job-related learning for exploratory or personal interest reasons, high quality can be defined as learners motivated for further learning and future pursuits, as opposed to poor experiences becoming barriers to developing a mindset of lifelong learning.

I also encourage SWDA to review the quality of student internships as internship-stacking and credit-bearing internships become more commonplace, especially for non-university graduates whose starting salaries lag their university peers. This includes safeguards to ensure fair allowances, reasonable work hours and safe and meaningful tasks. Investing in high quality student internships will benefit the same employers when graduates enter the workforce.

Third and final "high" – high returns. Unlike other countries, where unions need to lobby for fairer access to training opportunities and employment support, Singapore has invested billions into our workforce and skills development ecosystem, and earlier than most. We also have a highly educated workforce with over 60% of resident workers holding tertiary qualifications, and over 40% holding degrees. On paper, this should translate into a highly productive and skilled workforce. It is worthwhile asking: do the returns justify our investments?

Granted, returns may be hard to quantify, as they go beyond employment outcomes, wage progression and training participation rates among vulnerable worker segments. Investing in a culture of lifelong learning and employment support has ripple effects on the resilience and diversity of our workforce. At the same time, a disconnect between training supply and labour demand results in underutilised talent and skills or qualifications mismatch, which drive employers to hire externally. In other words, we end up paying twice, once to train Singaporeans and again, to import foreign skills, while weakening the Singaporean Core.

In Singapore, we do not have a shortage of funding or initiatives. We have a coordination problem. Our workforce and skills development ecosystem has matured beyond the experimental, piloting phase. Moving forward, I submit that funding must be more closely tied to or even conditional upon outcomes, that is, whether quantitative, like time-to-placement, or qualitative, like more meaningful and autonomous tasks within work scope. Can SWDA also share its plans to successfully integrate jobs and skills infrastructure and management strategy to increase return on investment?

Time, skills and qualifications mismatches were raised as a point of concern in NTUC's recently released two-year study with the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) on underemployment. This refers to when workers can work more hours or take on higher-skilled roles but are unable to or choose not to. We therefore recommend an expanded definition of underemployment and closer tracking of these trends. SWDA can develop a robust and centralised tracking system to track longitudinal outcomes of its various courses, programmes and credit schemes as well as workers' career health to ensure returns commensurate with cost.

To conclude, the creation of SWDA holds powerful potential for a higher speed, higher quality and higher returns skills and workforce development ecosystem, given the successful integration of jobs and skills infrastructure and management strategy. I encourage SWDA to boldly reimagine what learning and working can look like for the next generation and plant seeds early, just as the Government did with WSG and SSG over a decade ago.

I also invite SWDA to leverage the Tripartite Jobs Council as it operates within the wider workforce ecosystem to transform skills and jobs, because this will be SWDA's key ground like into the heart of workplaces and worker groups. Can Singapore become a leader in innovative and inclusive learning practices, such as peer learning through communities of practice, residency programmes and incubators for non-traditional career aspirations or non-traditional learners, like caregivers, seniors and persons with disabilities? Can Singapore accomplish a triple-win by fostering a workforce with higher productivity, higher resilience and higher flexibility to meet the needs of workers, learners and employers? If we continue to be proactive rather than reactive, I believe we can.

We must remember that today, we no longer just learn, work and retire. We learn, work, learn, work, learn, work, and maybe, retire. Mr Speaker, Sir, I support this Bill.

Mr Speaker: Ms Eileen Chong.

4.22 pm

Ms Eileen Chong Pei Shan (Non-Constituency Member): Mr Speaker, in Mandarin, please.

(In Mandarin): Mr Speaker, I support the establishment of the Skills and Workforce Development Authority. I hope that this newly established statutory board will operate in bold and innovative ways across three areas to meet the changing needs of the world and the Artificial Intelligence transition, so no Singaporean is left behind.

First, we need to make job redesign a priority. The latest survey report released by the Ministry of Manpower shows that among businesses which have already adopted or intend to adopt AI, more are focused on training and skills upgrading rather than on redesigning jobs.

This reflects a concern: that employers will integrate AI into existing workflows rather than begin with employees' well-being in mind by making their future work more valuable, meaningful and sustainable.

I therefore hope that the SWDA will invest more resources in and place greater emphasis on job redesign by making it a priority that will strengthen the competitiveness of our workforce.

Second, I hope the SWDA can address the gaps in Singapore's skills-based hiring model. Many surveys have found that the majority of Singapore employers still focus on the applicants' academic qualifications and certificates rather than their skills.

As one of the largest employers, the Government has also yet to begin tracking data on how many Public Service job advertisements include or omit academic qualification requirements. Mr Speaker, if even the Government has not made a clear start in moving in this direction, how can we encourage more employers to do the same?

I hope that as the Government leads the private sector in promoting skills-based hiring, it will also publish relevant data in tandem – for example, by tracking how many employers have adopted a skills-first approach in their recruitment process.

Third, and more importantly, when publishing data to measure the achievements of the new agency, we should do so from the perspective of Singaporeans and examine the tangible impact on their lives.

For employees, we should be measuring whether taking courses using the SkillsFuture training grant has improved employment outcomes – for instance, whether their salaries have increased – rather than simply tracking how many people have enrolled in programmes or utilised subsidies.

For employers', we should track whether productivity has improved after job redesign, rather than looking at whether employees have attended training courses or whether companies have received subsidies.

The establishment of this new agency is a fresh starting point. I hope we can also seize this opportunity to write a new chapter for the future of Singapore's employment and workforce – one that is told from the perspective of workers.

(In English): Mr Speaker, much of the conversation about workforce development and transformation has come from individuals who are senior enough to shape their organisations or by economists and academics looking at workforce transformation or the workforce from the macro perspective.

Today, I would like to offer a view from the middle. I speak as a millennial worker who has spent almost nine years in the workforce. I have spent my working life, so far, as an individual contributor, someone who implements strategic decisions more than I make them – a team member who is good at her job, but rarely at the table where such decisions are made. From where I stand, a lot of what workers have heard about workforce transformation has been directed at us. We are told, embrace new technology – learn, use, master. Do not let anxiety hold you back.

I understand why. Workers are the ones whose livelihoods are on the line. But we are only one side of the transformation equation. So, today, I want to talk about how the new SWDA must also hold employers accountable. I have three asks.

Mr Speaker, my first ask is that the agency makes job redesign a genuine priority. Currently, job redesign is buried in a sub-clause under section 5 of the Bill, which outlines the new agency's functions. It is defined as the review and re-allocation by an employer of duties and tasks among employees. I looked up where this definition could have come from. It appears to have been taken word for word from the 2003 Workforce Singapore Agency Act. Is the 23-year-old definition still adequate for the age of AI?

Job redesign, today, cannot simply mean re-allocating tasks between employees. It must ask a more fundamental question. Given what technology can do now, what should people be doing instead? It is the difference between a company that adopts AI by simply layering it onto existing workflows and hoping for the best, versus one that considers which parts of a job can be transformed, automated or augmented by technology, and then deliberately shaping the human role into something more valuable, purposeful and sustainable.

Early data shows a challenge. A recent MOM survey shows that the majority of Singapore companies have not adopted AI. Among the 28.5% that have begun using AI, meaningful integration remains limited. For companies that have started or plan to support the use of AI for employees, their focus remains overwhelmingly on training and upskilling and the provision of AI tools and subscriptions, rather than job redesign and career progression.

If we invest in upskilling workers, but do not change what they come back to – the same job scope, the same workflow, plus a backlog of work and emails that accumulated while we were upskilling – then we have not transformed anything. So, I ask the Minister, will the new agency be resourced and empowered to drive job redesign at the scale that Singapore genuinely needs?

Mr Speaker, my second ask is for the agency to close the implementation gap in skills-based hiring. We have invested significantly into SkillsFuture. Workers have put in time, effort and money into acquiring new skills, but too often they return to a job market only to be filtered out because they do not have the right paper qualifications or past job titles.

The evidence tells us that we have a challenge with employer behaviour. Singapore ranked 12 out of 30 countries in the inaugural Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development-Institute for Adult Learning (OECD-IAL) Skills-First Readiness and Adoption Index published last year, where we fall short is not in worker willingness to upskill. It is in employer adoption of skills-first hiring practices. Only 21% of Singapore employers saw removing degree requirements and adopting skills-first hiring as a promising way to increase talent availability. And when it comes to employers who would not prioritise a university degree when assessing candidates' skills, Singapore ranked last.

The index findings confirmed what a 2023 Boston Consulting Group's Skills-Based Hiring Trend Report had already shown. While the United States (US), UK and Australia had all reduced degree requirements when hiring for university-level jobs between 2017 and 2022, Singapore moved in the opposite direction. Degree requirements increased by 5.3% in the same period.

And here is what is more concerning. While much has been said about making skills-based hiring a priority – and I recognise the groundwork done by introducing the skills-based hiring handbook and establishing the Centre for Skills-First Practices – it is unclear whether any of this has materially changed how Singapore employers hire.

I filed a Parliamentary Question last November, asking what percentage of Public Service jobs waived formal academic qualifications and employers' skills-based assessment as a primary hiring criterion. The answer I received was that the Public Service, our largest employer "do not track the number of job postings that do or do not include formal academic requirements in their criteria."

I also did not get a direct response to the second part of my question about target and timelines established to accelerate skills-based hiring across public agencies.

Mr Speaker, if our largest employer cannot tell us if it is moving in the right direction, how can other Singapore employers be persuaded to do the same? Will the new agency work with the Public Service to lead the adoption of skills-based hiring across public sector jobs?

Having already released relevant toolkit to support employers, will the new agency now commit to tracking and posting statistics on the adoption of skills-based hiring by Singapore employers? This could begin with a baseline that tracks the proportion of skills-based job postings, broken down by sector and employers' size. Singaporeans should be able to see year-on-year whether hiring culture is genuinely shifting or whether we still are, as the OECD Index found, bound by a stubborn paper ceiling.

My third and final ask, Mr Speaker, is perhaps the most important – measure what genuinely changes in workers' lives and not just what the agency has done.

Over the years, we have gotten very good accounting output: how many individuals assisted? How many programmes launched? How many events conducted and persons engaged? These numbers appear in annual reports, announced with pride. But does the completed course means that a worker's prospects have actually improved? Does the formation of a Company Training Committee mean a company has genuinely transformed?

I want to propose a simple but demanding shift from measuring output to tracking outcomes.

At the individual worker level, we should track wage progression and job retention. Track what proportion of SkillsFuture Credits were used for training that resulted in demonstrable career benefits, not just the uptake of SkillsFture programmes but the programmes' impact on workers' lives.

At the employer level, track whether companies are actually redesigning jobs and seeing productivity gains, not just sending staff for courses to access grants. Track if companies are hiring differently, valuing demonstrated skills. Are they also less likely to conduct retrenchments because they invested in their people before a downturn? These are harder to measure. They require follow-through and some courage in data collection.

The agency should also publish anonymised employer level outcome data by sector and by company size. Let Singaporeans see who is genuinely transforming and who is performing transformation.

At the workforce level, track whether anxiety is coming down and resilience is going up. Track whether wages and productivity are moving in tandem. Are the benefits of transformation reaching workers across the income and skills spectrum, or whether they are concentrating as they often do at the top?

I hope the new agency's annual report will from day one commit to tracking these outcomes rather than cataloguing programmes launched. If we cannot measure it, we cannot improve it.

And Mr Speaker, I want to now close where I started – as a Singaporean worker watching this transformation unfold from the middle. Most of us are willing to learn. Some of us have already tried. What we need now is not more inspiration or encouragement. We need a system that holds employers and that moves employers and workers forward together, and that holds both sides to account, one where upskilling leads somewhere, where hiring is fair and where success is measured, not in programmes run but in lives that have durably improved.

The new SWDA carries a mandate that workers have heard different versions of before and that is precisely why it should do things differently. Mr Speaker, I support the Bill.

Mr Speaker: Ms Jessica Tan.

4.34 pm

Ms Jessica Tan Soon Neo (East Coast): Mr Speaker, I rise in support of the Bill. For many of my residents – mid-career PMETs navigating transitions, older workers trying to stay relevant, caregivers balancing work and family, younger workers facing contract roles and SMEs struggling with manpower constraints – this Bill can have real, practical implications. It reshapes how Singapore supports workers and employers at a time when economic change is accelerating amidst disruptions driven by AI and technical advancements as well as geopolitical uncertainties.

Merging two agencies is a major organisational change. What are the key milestones and expected timelines for full integration so that workers, employers and training providers know what to anticipate?

Can the Minister share what safeguards will be in place to ensure that individuals currently in training and active job search continue training and receive uninterrupted career guidance and job matching support during this transition? Will service levels be set and monitored during this period to ensure that workers and employers are not adversely impacted?

Let me talk about supporting workers. Residents often share the challenges they face navigating multiple touchpoints for training, job matching and career guidance.

This Bill strengthens career guidance, training and job matching by giving the new agency explicit statutory functions from providing career advisory services, to developing and accrediting training, to delivering employment facilitation – enabling a fully integrated end-to-end support system for every individual. With integration, I am glad to hear the Minister assuring that the agency will strengthen personalised career coaching for mid-career and older workers as they face the steepest barriers.

Clause 5 gives the new agency clear statutory powers to support workers facing sectoral disruptions through career transitions, targeted training pathways and job-matching.

Workers in certain sectors like aviation, retail, hospitality, logistics and administrative roles have faced rapid changes. The new agency can be proactive rather than reactive to better anticipate sectoral shifts as well as work with employers and design training aligned with real hiring needs, for sectors undergoing sectoral transformation.

Can the Minister share how the new agency will use the coordination powers outlined in the Bill to intervene early in disrupted sectors to support workers before displacement occurs?

Let me now touch about flexibility of training. Many workers, especially caregivers, need modular, flexible or part time options. How will the agency ensure that flexible training formats and blended learning pathways are expanded to support workers with irregular schedules and those with caregiving responsibilities? How will the new agency ensure that these flexible options meet industry-recognised outcomes, deliver clear learning outcomes and remain aligned with employer and sector needs? This is important because it ensures that workers who need flexibility are not disadvantaged, and that the skills they acquire remain credible and valued in the labour market.

Let me now touch on supporting younger workers. I have previously shared feedback from our young residents which indicate an increasing trend of younger workers entering the workforce through contract roles, or have employment disrupted due to business restructuring or transformation. Many have shared with me the anxieties and the challenges they face re-entering the workforce after their contracts end, or when their roles evolve or are phased out.

Can the Minister clarify how the new agency will support younger workers whose employment are disrupted by restructuring or who struggle to secure stable roles after completing contract work?

A lot has been said about AI and the Minister too shared on this. AI is reshaping job roles across every sector, and workers need timely, coordinated support to navigate these changes. Clause 5 of the Bill equips the new agency to identify emerging needs early and develop and accredit training and provide career guidance for workers whose roles are being transformed.

Can I ask the Minister to also share what the agency can do to help workers understand how AI will affect their roles, access relevant training early and transition into new or redesigned jobs with confidence? Will the agency proactively monitor emerging AI trends and their impact on job roles and skills requirements? And how will the agency work with employers, unions, sector agencies and technology partners to identify early signals of job transformation, update the skills frameworks ahead of time and most importantly, ensure workers receive timely guidance and training before disruptions take hold?

Let me now touch on employers. SMEs often tell us that they are overwhelmed by multiple schemes and processes and a single integrated agency will simplify this experience.

A clear and streamlined interface for employers is essential if we want job redesign, training grants and manpower advisory to be easily accessible, especially for SMEs who often lack dedicated HR capacity. The Bill provides the foundation which empower the new agency to offer integrated manpower advisory, workforce upgrading support and enables coordination across job redesign, training and grant programmes. This creates the basis for a single, coherent touchpoint for employers.

The Minister did share that there would alignment of skills development with labour market data and integrated workforce development and transformation. He also spoke about the importance of partnership. So, I would like seek clarification on how the agency will work with the various industry players, industry associations, unions and sector partners to ensure that the SMEs receive timely, practical and sector relevant support as they navigate the workforce transformation and adopt new practices on the ground.

A challenge that employers frequently face is that training does not always match real operational needs. How will the agency ensure that employer feedback is systematically incorporated into training pathways and programme design? And will employers be engaged in curriculum design and workforce planning?

Finally, before I conclude, I would like to ask Minister to share what measures will be in place to assess the effectiveness of the new integrated agency?

Mr Speaker, the questions and clarifications I have raised – and there are many – reflect broader concerns about the potential gaps that remain, even with the consolidation of functions of SSG and WSG, and the clearer mandates set out in this Bill. Consolidation alone does not guarantee a seamless experience for workers or employers, nor does it automatically ensure that the new agency will be able to proactively address technological disruptions or uphold the quality and effectiveness of training and support across all formats.

These outcomes will depend heavily on strong implementation, clear accountability for results and close partnership with employers, unions, industry associations and training providers. It is this ecosystem alignment – not structure alone – that will determine whether the agency can deliver on the full promise of the Bill and provide meaningful, timely support for both workers and employers as our economy continues to transform.

A key point I pick up throughout the Minister's speech is that while the integration of SSG and WSG is important, it is the role it plays in building and strengthening the ecosystem that is critical. And Mr Speaker, I stress this point because I think it is a recognition that one agency cannot the panacea to solve all problems and the recognition that it takes all of us. I think the Minister touched on this about the need for a mindset and a cultural change and a partnership. I would like to say that I do agree with him, but it goes beyond integration. It will be really a whole shift in how all parties work together.

Mr Speaker, this Bill gives us an important opportunity to strengthen the way we support our workers and employers through economic and technological change. If we get it right, we can build a more responsive, integrated and future ready ecosystem that helps workers navigate disruption with confidence and enables employers, especially our SMEs, to transform and grow. I support the Bill.

Mr Speaker: Mr Mark Lee.

4.45 pm

Mr Mark Lee (Nominated Member): Mr Speaker, over the past decade, SSG and WSG have each delivered important outcomes. SSG has built a culture of lifelong learning and expanded access to training. WSG has evolved from a placement agency into one that supports career guidance, transitions and employability. Taken together, they have supported many workers and firms, and have laid the foundation for a more resilient workforce.

At the same time, AI and other technologies are already reshaping how work is done. This is affecting hiring decisions, job design and workforce structures. In this environment, the link between growth, jobs and skills is becoming less direct.

Sir, a worker does not experience the system in two parts. He experiences it as one journey, from training to employment, to career and wage progression. And the same is true from a business perspective. A business does not think in terms of training policy versus employment policy. It thinks in terms of whether it can access the right skills, at the right time and at a cost it can sustain. This is where the rationale for the merger becomes clear.

The intention is to create a more coordinated system, one that connects skills to jobs and jobs back to skills in a continuous loop. It signals a shift towards a user-centric system, where support is organised around the journey of workers and the workforce needs of businesses, rather than around individual programmes.

I support this. However, the key question is how this translates into a better experience for businesses on the ground. I have six areas of clarifications.

First, companies today trying to reskill and redeploy workers must navigate multiple schemes, portals and processes. Even where support exists, it is not always clear how the different pieces fit together. Similar programmes, such as WSG's Career Conversion Programmes and SSG's Career Transition Programmes, operate with different rules, funding structures and employer touchpoints. SMEs do not have the internal capacity to interpret policy intent, design training pathways and manage compliance across multiple schemes.

In a fast-moving environment, these delays directly affect competitiveness and workforce outcomes. I would like to ask how the agency intends to operationalise this user-centric model so that it delivers a genuinely simpler and more intuitive experience where workers and businesses can navigate a single, coherent pathway, rather than multiple disconnected ones?

And beyond the front-end experience, how will the agency address the underlying system design? Today, many programmes are designed to achieve similar outcomes but operate in parallel. Even if access is streamlined, fragmentation can persist behind the scenes.

Will the agency use this merger to rationalise and align these overlapping schemes into a more coherent, employer-facing system so that a firm pursuing a single objective, such as redeployment or upskilling, does not have to operate across multiple tracks?

A related point is preserving a strong employer focus. While the merger brings jobs and skills together, the third leg is business demand, which ultimately generates those jobs. Businesses are not just consumers of programmes; they are the source of job creation and the drivers of skills demand. How will the agency ensure it remains deeply employer-responsive and not primarily programme-driven? In particular, how will it prioritise skills that employers need now rather than courses that are easier to scale or administer?

In this regard, while not suggesting further structural changes, it is important that the jobs and skills system remains closely anchored to enterprise transformation efforts led by Enterprise Singapore and supported by the trade associations and chambers (TACs), which are closest to business needs.

A second area of responsiveness is sector-specific realities.

Different sectors face very different workforce dynamics. Manufacturing firms are upgrading automation. Digital firms are competing globally for talent. Healthcare providers are managing acute manpower shortages. Sustainability-focused sectors are adapting to new regulatory demands. Each requires distinct workforce strategies.

Feedback from the Singapore Manufacturing Federation suggests that sector-embedded models, such as the SkillsFuture Queen Bee approach, have been effective precisely because they are grounded in industry practice and supported by TACs. Even after the merger, it will be important to preserve and deepen this sector responsiveness.

I would, therefore, like to ask how the agency intends to retain and strengthen sector-specific expertise. Will industry-led frameworks, co-developed with TACs, continue to shape programme design? And will support remain differentiated for SMEs and large enterprises, given that the majority of our workforce is employed by SMEs?

A third area is the funding and compliance framework. The Bill introduces stronger powers around verification, inspection and recovery of funding. These are necessary, particularly considering past abuses. But in recent years, the cumulative effect of tighter controls had been longer reimbursement timelines, heavier documentation requirements and increased administrative burden even for firms with strong track records.

For SMEs, this creates real cashflow strains, as firms often have to carry training and wage costs for extended periods while awaiting reimbursement.

In this regard, can the agency move towards a more risk-based approach? Can we differentiate between employers with established compliance histories and higher-risk cases? Can audits be more targeted and reliance placed more on post-disbursement or exception-based checks?

Related to this is how sensitive business information will be handled. Businesses understand the need for verification but may want clearer safeguards when requests touch on customer confidentiality, intellectual property or regulated information.

A fourth area is capability translation. For many SMEs, the constraint is not access to training, but the ability to translate training into productivity. What SMEs need is more applied support, contextualised training, embedded learning and project-based approaches tied to real operational challenges. In this regard, will the agency place greater emphasis on applied, firm-level capability so that training is more directly linked to measurable business outcomes?

A fifth area is speed and responsiveness. As AI accelerates, workforce disruption may become more frequent and more compressed in time. From a worker's perspective, the key issue is not just whether training is available, but how quickly that translates into re-employment. Will the agency place a stronger emphasis on what we may call the "rebound"? How quickly and effectively workers are supported from displacement back into meaningful employment?

The use of integrated intelligence to identify at-risk workers earlier is a promising development. How proactive will these interventions be in practice, and how will businesses be engaged when early signals of workforce disruption are identified?

At the same time, many firms would prefer to redesign roles and redeploy workers internally rather than retrench. Will the agency consider strengthening incentives and support for such employer-led redeployment, so that companies are encouraged to build and transition their existing workforce?

Finally, Mr Speaker, there is the issue of service standards and transition discipline. As the ecosystem of training, career and employment service providers expands, it will be important to ensure consistency in quality, standards and outcomes across providers. I would like to ask how the agency intends to manage this as the ecosystem grows.

Sir, the direction of the merger is clear, but during any integration, there is a risk that existing schemes, applications and commitments to businesses may become disrupted or delayed. Many companies are already participating in ongoing programmes offered by WSG and SSG. These should not be slowed down or require rework simply because the administering structure has changed.

I would like to ask whether the Government will provide clear transition assurance that existing schemes, pending applications and ongoing commitments will continue to be honoured under their current terms and timelines, as far as possible?

I note that the Bill provides for transitional regulations over a two-year period. Given the scale of integration, I would like to ask what further measures may be considered should issues persist beyond that period?

Lastly, I would also like to ask whether the agency will consider publishing a service charter, setting out expected response times, processing timelines, escalating channels and sector points of contact. For SMEs in particular, delays in approvals or unclear responses can directly affect hiring, training and transformation decisions.

Mr Speaker, the intent of this Bill is sound. It reflects the need for a more coordinated and integrated workforce system at a time when the pace of economic and technological change is accelerating. As we move into the next phase of transformation, the success of this merger will allow Singaporeans and our businesses to navigate a much more complex and uncertain future with confidence. Sir, I support the Bill.

Mr Speaker: Dr Wan Rizal.

4.55 pm

Dr Wan Rizal (Jalan Besar): Mr Speaker, this Bill is about bringing skills, career and employment functions under one agency. But that itself, is only the means, it is not the end. The real question is pretty simple: will this make life easier and clearer for Singaporeans trying to find their way in a changing economy?

In my Budget speech, I spoke about transitions and the need to have greater clarity, and I think that is exactly the issue here that we are addressing.

For many students, fresh graduates and workers today, the problem is not just whether support exists. The problem is whether the way forward is clear, whether there is clarity: in what jobs are growing, what skills really matter, which pathway is worth taking and who can help me get there? And that is why this Bill matters.

This Bill gives SWDA a broad remit across career, employment and training matters. It is meant to support students preparing for entry into the labour market, Singaporean's seeking employment or re-employment and employees seeking to develop their careers and remain in productive employment.

Sir, I want to speak from two vantage points that I have seen first-hand as an educator: pre-employment training students and continuing education and training learners. These are two different groups. They have different pressures. But both are really asking the same question: where does this path lead to?

And to me that is where SWDA comes in. In fact, if I may put it very bluntly and simply, SWDA must be the bridge between learning and work.

Let me start with the pre-employment training (PET) students. As a former educator, I have seen many students do everything right. They study hard, they complete their courses, they submit their work, mostly. They try to make good decisions. But as graduation approaches, many still become quite anxious. Not because they do not want to start work. Not because they are lazy. Not because they are not sure how to turn what they have learnt into a real first job.

Because they ask: fundamentally, does this qualification still matter? Will employers value me for what I can do? Do I still need more training? Do I need experience before I can even get experience?

This is what I would call the first-job gap. It is the gap between finishing a formative stage of life and seeing a real route towards meaningful work. It is in that gap that confidence can disappear very quickly. I have seen capable, hardworking and promising students lose their footing at exactly the moment they should have been stepping forward with confidence.

Some took temporary work while trying to find their footing. Some drifted into jobs beyond what they have been trained for, not because they chose that path confidently, but because they could not see a way into something better. What they lacked was not willingness. What they lacked was a clear bridge into work. And many parents are asking the same things in their own way: after all that effort, after all these years of study, is there a real pathway to a real job?

Sir, I acknowledge that the Government has already taken steps to support fresh graduates. The GRIT programme is one such measure. It helps fresh graduates gain experience and skills through structured traineeships and I find it very useful. But it is still largely help that comes at a point after graduation and this issue is now even more urgent.

The newly announced Tripartite Jobs Council reflects that reality that workers and businesses are already facing disruption from AI and economic change. If one part of that is to help young people and fresh graduates find their footing, then that only reinforces the point that we cannot wait until the end of the journey to intervene. So, we must shape the pathways earlier. When we talk about workforce development, we cannot wait until the end of the journey and then say: "Here are some portals, here are some schemes, good luck." That is not the pathway. That is a scavenger hunt.

So, SWDA must move upstream. That means better career guidance earlier in the student's journey. It means clearer signals on which jobs are growing and which skills matter. It means making internships, attachments and industry projects more normal, not something enjoyed mainly by those who already have the right networks. And it means making the school-to-work transition less dependent on luck. Our young people do not just need more options. They need better direction.

Sir, there is another group that I have also worked closely over the years, and these are the CET learners. Recently, some of them just graduated from their polytechnics and they messaged me about how happy they were to finish that line. They shared, over time, that their challenge is really different.

For a CET learner, going back to class is rarely a small decision. Many are already working and they have family responsibilities. Some are under financial pressure. Some have not studied for many years. Some are trying to recover from retrenchment, stagnation or simply a loss of confidence.

So, when a CET learner signs up for a course, normally, it is not casual. It is often an act of hope. They are saying: I am willing to learn again. I am willing to put in the effort. But I need to know this leads to somewhere.

This is a transition gap. It is the gap between returning to learn and actually improving one's job prospects, income, confidence or long-term mobility, and this is where frustration can bite hard because many adult learners are not looking for enrichment. They are looking for improvement. They do not want a certificate that just sits in a folder. They want to know: will this help me pivot? Will this improve my employability? Will this help me a role with prospects? And will these skills that I have learnt be recognised?

I have taught adult learners who came to class after work, carrying family responsibilities and financial pressure, like I mentioned earlier. They were serious, disciplined and were not there to collect papers. Their question was always practical: if I invest my evenings, my weekends and my energy in this, will it really lead to better jobs, better wages, or a more secure future? So, that is a fair question. In fact, that is the right question.

So, if SWDA is to succeed, it must not only support participation in CET. It must ensure CET is much more closely connected to job transitions, employer recognition and actual labour market demand. Otherwise, we are asking people to invest time, effort and money into learning without giving them a clearer route forward and that would be deeply unfair.

Sir, when we look at PET students and CET learners together, the lesson is clear. The issue in Singapore today is not just whether we have the courses. It is not whether we have job vacancies. It is whether people can move from learning to work with greater confidence and less guesswork.

This is why this merger matters. If SWDA works well, it can make that journey clearer, more practical and certainly, more credible. And this is where the merger in the right direction. It talks about moving beyond fragmented support towards upstream guidance, better triaging, stronger service integration and support that comes before crisis, not after.

Sir, I hope SWDA will focus on four practical shifts.

First, make jobs and skills information far more usable. A student should be able to understand what jobs are growing, what adjacent roles exist and what skills employers value. An adult learner should be able to understand whether a course is likely to help with employability, a job move or a proper pivot.

Second, strengthen work-integrated learning and applied exposure. Internships, attachments, project work and structured pathways into first jobs should not be left to chance. They should become more systematic, especially for those who do not already start with advantages.

Third, make skills-based matching real. Workers should be able to see what skills they already have, what roles they may be suited for, what gaps remain and what support can help them close that gap, and employers should be encouraged to hire with a clearer view of skills and potential, not just relying on pedigree shortcuts. This is also where I think we can learn from what is already happening on the ground.

Today, Singaporeans already have Government tools, such as MyCareersFuture and the Careers and Skills Passport to support job search and career planning. At the same time, e2i's NTUC AI Career Coach is trying to make career support more integrated and easier to use. The issue is not which platform exists or which platform is better. The issue is whether SWDA can make an overall experience more joined-up, so that workers do not feel like they are moving across separate islands of support.

Fourth, support must arrive before the crisis, not after. Too often, help comes after someone has already lost confidence, momentum or income. We need a system that can identify risk earlier and support people while they still have time and options. That is a smarter policy. And frankly, that is a more humane policy.

Sir, a central agency is useful. But an agency alone does not place workers. A good system does. And that is why strong tripartite coordination remains essential, including how SWDA works alongside the newly announced Tripartite Jobs Council so that training, transformation and job transitions reinforce one another, because people do not experience policy in neat categories. They experience it in much more simply, either I got help in time or I was left to figure it out by myself. That is the real test.

Sir, we should also be careful about how we define success. It is not enough to count how many people joined a particular programme, attended a course or received support. I think the real questions are: did they get a job? Was it a suitable job? Did they stay? Did they progress? Did their wages improve? Workers should be able to land, stay and progress. If SWDA is bringing skills and employment together, then it should also bring measurements together. Otherwise, we may end up celebrating activity without knowing whether lives are actually improving.

Sir, this also matters deeply for communities working hard to turn aspiration into mobility. Sir, in Malay, please.

(In Malay): In my work with M³+ Focus Area Four (FA4), and now as co-chair of the newly formed Economic Resilience Committee with Mr Saktiandi, it is clear to me that many Malay/Muslim youth, workers and families are not asking for sympathy.

They want clarity.

They want practical support.

They want fair access to good jobs and real opportunities for advancement.

And this matters because each group requires a different form of support; youth who are just entering the workforce, fresh graduates seeking their first opportunity, mid-career workers who are adapting, professionals who want to remain relevant and entrepreneurs who want to continue to grow.

In my work with M³+ FA4, this issue not just being studied at a policy level, but as a real effort to help job seekers and workers who are trying to adapt, upskill and regain their footing.

In efforts such as the digital measures that we have launched, it also demonstrates that different groups require different kinds of support – youth as early adopters, families as users that need guidance, the workforce as practical users and seniors as users who need to be reassured.

What matters now is ensuring that this confidence translates into good jobs, career advancement and economic resilience.

We have made progress in education and training.

But for many Malay/Muslim families, the real question is whether the pathway is clear for them?

Clear from school to employment.

Clear from training to a job.

Clear from unstable work to a better career.

This is where the role of SWDA must truly be felt on the ground.

As part of the efforts by FA4 effort as well as the Economic Resilience Committee, I hope we can work closely with SWDA so that the support provided truly matches the needs of different groups: whether they are youth, fresh graduates, mid-career workers, professionals and entrepreneurs.

This includes identifying growth sectors with strong potential, connecting our community to those opportunities, and building pathways that can genuinely translate into good jobs, career advancement and long-term economic resilience.

For me, this is not merely a matter of access. This is a matter of mobility.

(In English): Sir, if SWDA succeeds, our PET students will step into work with greater confidence, our CET learners will have greater assurance that learning can lead to real progress and our workers will move faster into suitable roles with less confusion and less anxiety.

Sir, in supporting this Bill, I hope the Government can clarify three practical points.

First, how will SWDA move upstream to close both the first-job gap for students and the transition gap for adult learners, so that pathways become clearer much earlier? Second, how will SWDA measure success beyond participation numbers, including whether people are placed into suitable jobs, whether they stay, whether they progress and whether their wages improve over time? Third, what concrete service experience should Singaporeans feel within the next one or two years in guidance, in matching and transition support that will show this merger is actually making the pathway much clearer. With those clarifications, I support the Bill.

Mr Speaker: Ms He Ting Ru.

5.11 pm

Ms He Ting Ru (Sengkang): Mr Speaker, today, workers have to reskill and upskill amidst a rapidly evolving economy in order to remain relevant and competitive in a challenging workforce. One of the ways that our policies seek to do so is by getting workers to undertake further training and education. Yet this, in itself, is challenging. Attending courses, often whilst juggling work and other life commitments, requires a significant expenditure of energy, time and also money.

As we debate the merger of SSG and WSG into the SWDA, we must ensure that processes and policies instituted in the new agency are ultimately rooted in people, a people-centric approach. They must lead to fruitful employment opportunities for workers and result in a deep pool of talent for employers to draw from.

A people-centric approach to skills upgrading should also be easy for training providers to navigate. Adult private education institutes established under clause 78 of the Bill will be under the purview of two Ministries: MOE and MOM.

However, given that institutions would have to satisfy both academic standards and industrial needs, can the Minister clarify what would be the new agency's approach should there be any tension between these two aims? For example, how do we resolve competing aims that may arise out of the short-term workforce needs of industry against a longer-term educational and development lens? How will we end up preventing the creation of a two-headed monster in this new agency? Specifically, what safeguards will we put in place to prevent fragmented oversight or conflicting directives within the agency?

Another crucial aspect of a people-centred SWDA is to ensure open availability of granular information for the public and policy-makers alike to analyse the outcome of the agency's policies. This is established under clause 5(1)(g), which articulates the agency's responsibility to collect and publish data on career, employment and training matters alongside labour market insights.

WSG's annual report noted that in 2024, around 40,000 local workers managed to secure employment via WSG and e2i's career matching services. Do we have data that shows that the opportunities matched and employment secured via these services do match jobseeker skills and qualifications? Effective job matching requires career advisers with wide networks and a deep understanding of their industry. What is the Minister's assessment of the Volunteer Career Adviser Scheme's effectiveness in job matching and what are the Government's future plans regarding the scheme?

Drilling down further into our existing programmes, the Career Conversion Programme and GRIT programme are aimed at mid-career workers and fresh graduates respectively. In addition to providing work experience, these programmes also provide participants a pathway towards full-time employment with their host organisation.

How do we ensure that employers are not exploiting these schemes as a revolving door of Government-subsidised labour, instead of meaningfully inducting participants into full-time roles in their host organisations after the programme is completed? Although retention data is available at the industry level via Parliamentary Questions, it would be informative to study the proportion of participants retained as full-time employees by their respective host organisations at the employer level, including how long such employees stayed.

As mentioned by my Sengkang colleague, Jamus Lim, during Committee of Supply this year, we could allow a maximum number of times for an employer to participate in a programme but not employ any trainees upon completion of the programme. This could be a start to help us identify if there are employers who may be exploiting such schemes for cheaper labour, ultimately running counter to the spirit of such programmes.

There was also a rush by many Singaporeans to redeem their expiring SkillsFuture credits last year. Yet were these credits utilised for courses and programmes that genuinely improved our people's employability or offer positive contributions to personal growth and development that trickle into other dive domains? A Forum letter to The Straits Times at the end of last year voiced a concern about the quality of some SkillsFuture courses – overpriced, with poor learning outcomes and laughable assessments.

Currently, SSG-funded courses are evaluated via the training quality and outcomes measurement framework, which surveys participants. However, such self-reported surveys may not accurately reflect the effectiveness of these courses in enhancing the employment prospects of their attendees.

To measure employment outcomes, we need to focus more on objective metrics, such as longer-term post-course employment status, in order to more accurately evaluate whether these courses genuinely improve employment outcomes. This analysis could be carried out, for example, using Central Provident Fund (CPF) data to determine the effectiveness of each SkillsFuture course.

While it can be argued that having these schemes are reflective of a government willing to invest in building the capabilities of its people, the jury is still out on their return on investment without sufficient data publicly available.

The Workers' Party manifesto includes calls for the Government to track and publish clear KPIs on the effectiveness of SkillsFuture and career coaching programmes. Such data may include the take-up rate, duration of employment and post-training placement. Having public data allows the public to know about the effectiveness of their schemes and will aid to pinpoint potential areas for improvement.

Also, while the Government is an active creator of early career opportunities, such as internships and traineeships, I also hope that we can work towards providing more opportunities for mid-career transitioners as well.

I would also like to make a few remarks on how we develop a significant part of our workforce – persons with disabilities (PwDs). If we wish to see the greater integration of PwDs into the wider community, the targets we set must encompass a wider range of factors. For instance, while the Enabling Masterplan 2030 aims to achieve a 40% employment rate among PwDs by that year, there are other factors to be considered as well.

While skill and qualification-related underemployment within the overall labour market was tracked in a recent NTUC study on underemployment, the Disabled People's Association (DPA) suggested in 2024 that these metrics should also be tracked for the PwD community. Coordination with SG Enable needs to take place to collect and publish data surrounding the retention of participants under the School-To-Work and Place-and-Train programmes to ensure these programmes' effectiveness and boosting full-time employment amongst PwDs. As many job seekers with disabilities experience demoralising hurdles when job hunting, a people-centric and inclusive SWDA should be attuned to the needs of PwDs, thus helping to address under employment among PwDs.

Although the employment rate for PwDs has increased to 34.7% in 2025, many PwDs have expressed concerns that the roles offered to them by employment support services often do not meet their career aspirations and skillsets. Interviews with PwDs by the DPA also highlighted the tendency for jobseekers with disabilities to be pigeonholed into certain roles, especially within the services industry.

If we wish for PwDs to thrive in our society, they should not be constrained to a select few job scopes. I hope that the SWDA would factor in the prior skills and experience of jobseekers with disabilities when job matching. Additional support could be regarded via an in-house accessibility office, which could provide services, such as consulting with employers regarding reasonable accommodations.

We must additionally ensure that PwDs have fewer barriers to access the wide range of courses available for re-skilling and upskilling. This is in alignment with Article 27 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which calls on governments to enable PwDs' effective access to general technical and vocational guidance programmes, placement services and vocational and continuing training.

Many PwDs were affected by the recent closure of Mountbatten Vocational School, which provides PwDs with higher support needs and avenue to pick up skills in preparation for a subsequent education at the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) or entry into the workforce. For PwDs with lower support needs, many have cited difficulty participating in SkillsFuture courses due to accessibility issues. This is backed up by the 2024 Disability Trends report highlighting that 61.6% of PwDs noted that they found it difficult to attend training programmes due to barriers because of their disability.

While the Enabling Academy's work in developing training courses catered to PwDs on topics, such as AI and cooking, is important, in the spirit of inclusivity, SkillsFuture courses should be made accessible to all via the provision of reasonable accommodations, a point that I and others in this House have previously made.

Finally, what it means to be a people-centred economy. During the recent Budget Statement, the Prime Minister highlighted the outsized role AI plays in our economic strategy. In the domain of reskilling, this includes revamping the SkillsFuture website with an increased focus on AI and offering participants of select AI courses, a free six-month premium AI subscription. Similarly, the recently updated criteria for courses to obtain Government funding requires either certification from a course endorsement body, or 50% of the skills taught should be listed on the Course Approval Skills List (CASL).

For the CASL, in particular, the skills listed support good growth jobs and are important for Singapore's economy. While skills important to the social sector, such as social services, youth development and casework management, are included in the CASL, I believe we can do more to drive up our social service manpower capacity and overall interest in the sector. As I previously mentioned in my Budget 2024 speech, I hope that the agency would platform these skills in addition to economic growth drivers, such as tech and AI.

To conclude, while the SWDA drives economic growth by widening and deepening our talent pool, the agency work also affects the livelihoods of individual Singaporeans, and we must ensure that it is people centric. This involves untangling unnecessary red tape for training providers and broadening the types of data collected to monitor the agency's effectiveness in securing fruitful employment opportunities and outcomes for Singaporeans. Furthermore, the agency should also boost its capabilities serving marginalised communities, such as PwDs and ex-offenders, whilst promoting the people sector, not just focus on areas with strong economic potential. Notwithstanding this, I support the Bill.

Mr Speaker: Mr Melvin Yong.

5.23 pm

Mr Melvin Yong Yik Chye (Radin Mas): Mr Speaker, this Bill comes at a time when our workforce is navigating significant uncertainty, amid economic pressures and disruptive technological change. Jobs are being redesigned, new roles are emerging and existing roles are evolving at a faster pace than ever before.

For many workers, especially mid-career and lower-wage workers, these changes bring both opportunity and uncertainty. In this context, the need for a more integrated and responsive workforce development system is clear. By bringing together SSG and WSG under a single Statutory Board, this Bill strengthens coherence across skills development, employment facilitation and career progression. The Labour Movement supports this direction.

Mr Speaker, workers do not experience their careers in neat, distinct stages. Skills acquisition, employment and progression are closely interlinked. Bringing these functions together within a single agency can reduce fragmentation and improve coordination.

For workers, this should mean a more seamless experience, where access to career guidance, training and job placements are better aligned. As this integration is implemented, it will be important to ensure that processes remain streamlined and responsive to both workers and employers.

In particular, we must ensure that this more integrated system delivers for those who need it most.

Mr Speaker, lower-wage workers must benefit meaningfully from this integration. They often face greater constraints in accessing training and career opportunities. The system must therefore be designed with their needs in mind. It should be accessible, adequately supported and outcome-focused, so that workers can upgrade without undue strain and see clear improvements in employment and wages.

In this regard, the Progressive Wage Model (PWM) remains a key pillar in our efforts. PWM has uplifted lower-wage workers by linking wages to skills, productivity and career progression. It has also contributed to sustained wage growth across several sectors. For PWM to remain effective, it must be supported by a well-aligned skills ecosystem. In this regard, I have three suggestions.

First, I urge the new agency to align training pathways more closely with PWM job ladders, so that workers can clearly see how skills upgrading leads to wage progression. Second, I encourage continued collaboration with tripartite partners to keep sectoral skills frameworks current and responsive. Third, I call on the new agency to expand workplace-based training, enabling workers to upgrade while remaining employed.

At the same time, sustained wage growth depends on continued productivity gains. Mr Speaker, I would like to ask how the new agency intends to support companies, especially SMEs in PWM sectors, to undertake job redesign and productivity improvements and better wage outcomes for our lower-wage workers. Can it provide more structured advisory support, practical tools and targeted funding to help companies adopt technology and better match skills to jobs? This will be key to ensuring that productivity keeps pace with wage increases and that PWM remains sustainable over the long term.

Building on this link between skills and progression, let me turn to the Careers and Skills Passport that was introduced in 2024 and also mentioned by the Minister in his opening speech. This initiative can complement PWM, particularly in sectors where wage progression is tied to clearly defined skills ladders. The passport provides workers with a consolidated record of their skills and experience, improving both transparency and portability.

However, one key question is whether lower-wage workers, especially those in PWM sectors, are actively using the passport today. If not, what more can be done to raise awareness, improve accessibility and encourage adoption among this group? We must ensure that tools, like the Careers and Skills Passport, are not just used by those who are already ahead, but also by those we most want to uplift.

How does the new agency plan to integrate the passport with sectoral skills frameworks, particularly in PWM sectors? And how will it support employers, especially SMEs, to use the passport more effectively in hiring and progression decisions? Stronger and more inclusive adoption can improve skills recognition and job matching outcomes.

Beyond supporting workers in employment and progression, we must also ensure that those who step out of the workforce can return with confidence.

Mr Speaker, as the new agency builds pathways to support individuals returning to work, this must include not only caregivers but also workers who have experienced injury or sudden illness.

As I have previously highlighted in this House, returning to work after an injury or an illness is often not straightforward. Workers may face reduced capacity, loss of confidence and uncertainty about how to re-enter employment. A setback in health should not become a permanent setback in employment.

At the same time, employers may be unsure how best to accommodate such workers. Recovery is not just a medical issue, it is also a workplace issue. We therefore need a more structured and coordinated approach. I would like to encourage the new agency to strengthen support for those returning to the workforce in three areas.

First, job redesign and matching. Jobs must adapt to workers, just as workers adapt to jobs. Can the new agency work more closely with employers to redesign roles and identify suitable job opportunities?

Second, skills recovery and transition. How will the new agency support targeted training and career guidance to help these workers re-enter the workforce?

Third, employer support and incentives. Can the new agency consider introducing targeted support for flexible work arrangements, such as a "Flexi-Work" grant to encourage modified roles, reduced hours, or even phased return-to-work options?

A phased return to work can make the difference between dropping out and staying in the workforce. More broadly, we must move from ad hoc support to a structured return-to-work system, so that workers are not left behind due to unforeseen life circumstances.

Mr Speaker, this Bill lays the foundation for a more integrated and responsive workforce development system. The Labour Movement supports its intent. Success will be judged by how well we improve the lived experience of workers – whether they can move with confidence between jobs, whether skills upgrading leads to real wage progression and whether lower-wage workers see sustained improvements in their livelihoods.

If we keep these outcomes at the centre of our efforts, this reform will strengthen both our workforce system and the compact between workers, employers and the Government. Mr Speaker, I support the Bill and I look forward to the Minister's clarifications on these points.

Mr Speaker: Mr Kenneth Tiong.

5.32 pm

Mr Kenneth Tiong Boon Kiat (Aljunied): Speaker, we are asked today to approve the merger of two agencies. I would use this occasion to ask whether the system they inherit is the right one.

We often speak of skills upgrading and credentials. The real question is simpler: are we building real capabilities for our workers?

Here is where I think the Government has done well. WSG's Place-and-Train Career Conversion Programmes are – by the Government's 2024 evaluation – a success. Close to 18,000 mid-career Singaporeans were placed between 2017 and 2022. Wages rose by up to 6.5% by year four. Employment retention improved by four percentage points. And the biggest gains went to non-PMET and mature workers – the groups the credit-based system has struggled to reach.

I also would like to acknowledge the 38 Skills Frameworks that were co-built with industry, unions and professional bodies. They are a useful compilation of the skills and competencies expected for each role in these sectors.

But as those who have been hiring managers know: what is in the frameworks sets necessary but insufficient bars. You still need interviews and competency tests to actually hire well.

This success of this Place-and-Train employer-anchored programme contrasts with other parts of the system which are not doing so well, such as the credit-based, individual-based SkillsFuture programme.

The credit-based side of the system has struggled on both integrity and take-up. In 2017, a syndicate fraud extracted nearly $40 million through fake enrolments. The Auditor-General later found millions more in overpayments and uncollected levies. On demand: the SkillsFuture Level-Up Programme – the flagship of mid-career upskilling, offering a $4,000 top-up – had reached only 28,000 out of 1.2 million eligible citizens by end-2024, which is only 2%.

I do not think this is an execution failure, but a flaw in the policy idea itself.

The SkillsFuture system of the last decade is an example of the individual-credit system: the Government funds individuals to purchase courses from a permissive provider market. Suppliers capture the funds; fraud is possible; links with entry-level capability are weak. The largest meta-analysis of active labour-market programmes – Card, Kluve and Weber, 2018, with 207 estimates across 200-plus studies – found classroom training shows weak or negative short-run effects, with gains emerging only at the two- to three-year mark, and concentrated on the long-term unemployed.

The populations best served by these programmes are the displaced and long-term jobless, not mid-career workers who need to shore up against job precarity or climb the wage ladder.

In France, they tried this model. In 2015, under President Hollande, they launched the Compte Personnel de Formation, a personal training account. Training hours attached to the person, not the job. The 2018 Macron reform converted those hours to euros – €500 a year, capped at €5,000, with higher caps for the lower-qualified. Then, in 2019 they built an app, Mon Compte Formation, a consumer-grade marketplace where any worker could browse, book or pay for any accredited course in a few taps. Employers and unions were disintermediated and cut out entirely. Twenty-one million accounts were activated. More than two million training purchases a year. It was one of the boldest individual-credit experiments of any major economy.

The result is instructive. TRACFIN, France's financial intelligence unit, recorded a five-fold rise in suspected fraud in a single year, from €8 million in 2020 to €43 million in 2021. Cold callers and fictitious providers followed the money. France spent the next four years walking it back: banning cold-calling, imposing co-payments that have since been raised twice, capping the most-abused course categories. France had the digital infrastructure, had the regulators and had the financial intelligence unit. What it did not have was any party other than the state itself bearing consequences for training quality.

The principal-agent problem is not solved by transparency, digitisation or individual choice. The chain of transmission of consequences for an individual credit system, from Ministry to agency to provider to learner to employer, is such that nobody bears the consequences of low-quality training. It is a principal-agent problem. No one is a principal.

The Career Conversion Programmes work because an employer is the principal before training begins. The individual-credit channel, by design, lacks that principal and no amount of enforcement can substitute for it.

It seems SkillsFuture has unfolded in a similar way. Can we redesign the system so that employers, not individuals purchasing courses, become the accountable parties? Not individual choice, which is what we have, but structured employer accountability: sectoral associations and firms bearing reputational and financial consequences for training quality. This would sharpen the Skills Frameworks too. Employers with skin in the game will push for a fuller accounting of what a job actually requires, not just entry criteria, but the tacit knowledge needed to stay and grow.

When funds are provisioned individually, the government defaults to input-side accountability: ensuring providers are accredited, claims meet thresholds and participants receive a certification. Whether the credential improves a worker's employability is not measurable at the point of purchase, only in labour outcomes, years later. The system optimises for what it can count, not what it should produce.

I think it is desirable to have sectoral associations and firms lead the upskilling journey directly to solve the principal-agent problem and consequently, invest in deep, long-duration training.

How do other economies solve the principal-agent problem?

Germany's apprenticeship system operates within one of Europe's most mobile credentialed labour markets, their Industrie- und Handelskammer or Chambers of Industry and Commerce certification is portable. The goal is workers who are chosen repeatedly at a premium, not workers who cannot leave. German apprentices earn about 15% more than the untrained two decades after entry, with lower unemployment risk and faster re-employment.

Economic skill-formation literature identifies three conditions for firms to invest in deep, long-duration training.

First, wage compression – sectoral bargaining that narrows pay differentials within a sector so rivals cannot simply poach trained workers at a premium.

Second, portable credentials – standardised, externally certified occupational profiles, so a worker's skill is legible to the whole labour market and the worker is willing to invest their own time.

Third, industry co-governance of curriculum – so that what is taught tracks what industry actually needs.

Singapore has the second of these, roughly. SkillsFuture certifications approximate portable credentials. Industry transformation maps and trade associations do consultative work that touches co-governance, but it is advisory, not binding – no sectoral employer body exercises a sign-off or veto on SkillsFuture curriculum, and no named individual's reputation moves with and is staked on the employment outcomes.

As I understand it, NTUC mainly bargains at the enterprise level rather than at the collective sector level.

So, I think we have neither true industry co-governance of curriculums, nor do we have sectoral bargaining to achieve wage compression. Some will say Singapore is too small for German-style sectoral institutions. Switzerland, population nine million, sustains deep sectoral bargaining and apprenticeship in pharma, watchmaking and machine tools. Size is not the binding constraint. Institutional architecture is.

I have two proposals.

First, sectoral bargaining. NTUC's current architecture is attuned to individual employer engagement. That is not the right vehicle for deep tacit-knowledge sectors. These sectors need binding sectoral wage scales, not just floors, but scales that compress the wage distribution.

Right now, a firm that invests in deep training risks losing that worker to a competitor the day after certification. Wage compression fixes this. It narrows pay gaps so poaching is not worth it. The return on training stays with the firm that trained. That is why German firms fund three-year apprenticeships at their own expense.

The PWM lifts wages for lower-wage workers, and it does so well. But it sets floors, not scales. It says to the worker: train, and you move up. What we need is a structure that says to the employer: train deeply, because you will keep the return.

Not every sector is suitable. Sectoral bargaining fits sectors with deep tacit knowledge – semiconductor backend, aerospace MRO, petrochemicals, marine and offshore – but perhaps not faster-moving industries like AI.

Second, co-governance with consequences. Named industry entities and individuals should have sign-off and veto on SkillsFuture curricula, not as advisors, but as accountable parties whose reputations move with employment outcomes. We must also lower the accreditation barriers that keep the most credible practitioners out. The Advanced Certificate in Learning and Performance requires 71 hours of coursework, screening out the domain experts we need and screening in those with time to spare.

For faster-moving industries – AI, software, frontier hardware – the fixes above may not work. Skills change too fast; firms are too few and too mobile. What works in these sectors is something different: knowledge spreading through people working near each other. That is how Shenzhen and Silicon Valley were built – rapid knowledge diffusion through firms, suppliers and people solving problems together, carrying what they learned into the next job.

We cannot build a Shenzhen-scale agglomeration on 750 square kilometres. But we can do two things.

One, engineer knowledge diffusion through people, not papers.

To produce an industrial commons here, first, we will need to revive the engineering society ethos. If we are serious about capability over credentials, the most basic question is: do our workers and engineers know how things work?

We need to know how things work at the level of teardown and re-assembly because that is the foundation of any serious industrial capability. The model is Munro and Associates in Michigan, which has spent close to four decades disassembling competitor vehicles down to the last fastener and producing the detailed cost, design and process reports that the global automotive industry treats as authoritative. Japan's National Institutes of Technology teach 15-year-olds to disassemble electromechanical systems in formal "Reverse Engineering" courses. The US military reverse-engineered the Iranian Shahed drone and fielded its own version in Venezuela at $35,000 per unit, versus $1.3 million for a Tomahawk cruise missile.

Understanding how things are built is not a hobby. It is a strategic capability. There is no reason it cannot exist here as public infrastructure.

I propose we establish physical teardown facilities at our ITEs and polytechnics – not as one-off workshops, but as a vertical curriculum progressing from guided disassembly to design analysis to cost modelling. We should reverse-engineer frontier hardware – electric vehicles, batteries, solar, drones.

Structured public reports should feed the industrial commons. Such facilities could also be housed at A*STAR's centres, which I understand already runs model factories and joint industry labs. Partnered with ITEs and polytechnics, with structured access for SMEs, they would form a strong starting point.

For ordinary citizens, the National Library Board's MakeIT at Libraries – its free maker-space programme run with the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), offering 3D printing, digital cutting, robotics and coding classes in selected regional libraries – teaches the basics well. I have observed 3D printing and robotics classes there, and the starter sessions are well-designed. But the curriculum stops there, with no intermediate or advanced progression.

If we are serious about life-long learning, MakeIT needs a vertical curriculum – Stage 2 and Stage 3 modules, project-based, progressing from operating the machines to designing with them and using them more intensely – not just a wider menu of first lessons.

Our industrial clusters are well-designed. But co-location is necessary, not sufficient. Knowledge does not diffuse simply because firms share a postcode. It diffuses through people. Tacit production knowledge – the working understanding of why a process line behaves the way it does, what failure modes to watch for, which suppliers to trust – does not transfer through papers or seminars. It transfers through people, on the floor, over months.

Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) is the clearest example: between 1973 and 2008, 13,000 ITRI staff moved into Taiwanese industry, many of them seeding what became TSMC, UMC and the wider Hsinchu semiconductor cluster. Engineer circulation, not patents or licensing, was the primary transmission mechanism.

To speed up the rate of knowledge diffusion, I also propose an Industrial Commons Rotation: a statutory obligation on large firms – Government-linked corporations and major anchor MNCs – to second mid-senior technical staff into SMEs within the same sectoral cluster for six- to 18-month rotations, with reciprocal SME-to-large-firm flows so the small firms' problem-solving feeds back into the larger firms' processes. We can do this as a pilot in the tacit-knowledge sectors I named earlier – semiconductor backend, aerospace MRO, petrochemicals, marine and offshore.

If we want an industrial commons, we must make the people circulate.

Teacher rotation through industry should also try to be a statutory requirement. Polytechnic and ITE instructors can currently take industry attachments as a form of voluntary continuing professional development, but the mechanism is discretionary, not structural. I propose a pilot: 12 months in industry for every 60 months of teaching.

This is the first task: making the knowledge already inside Singapore circulate. The second task is to go to where the knowledge is being created.

The Overseas Markets Immersion Programme (OMIP), launched in 2024, is the right vehicle in form. In substance, it is far too small. The initial target was 250 individuals over two years; about 120 had been supported by early 2026. Salary support of up to 70% for nine months, capped at $5,000 a month, with a minimum salary threshold of $4,000 a month effectively restricts it to PMETs.

If I had to name one programme that could be reframed tomorrow at low cost and high return, it is OMIP. Three changes.

First, expand it by an order of magnitude – from a 250-person pilot to a 5,000-person annual cohort within five years.

Second, remove the minimum salary threshold for technical and operational roles in priority sectors, so ITE-trained engineers and polytechnic graduates can be deployed to cutting-edge manufacturing clusters in China, Japan and Europe – not only PMETs in regional roles.

Third, reframe the strategic purpose. OMIP is currently designed as outbound business development support – helping Singapore companies expand into new markets. It should also be inbound knowledge acquisition – sending Singaporeans to where manufacturing knowledge is being created, to bring it back. The architecture is broad enough to hold both, if we choose to use it that way.

Sir, in closing. The deepest lesson of the last decade of skills policy, here and abroad, is this: the state cannot substitute for the firm as the principal in a worker's training. We have spent 10 years and considerable public money trying. The next 10 years should be spent designing the system in which sectors and firms – and the workers themselves, through their unions – are forced to care about the answer.

Sectoral co-governance with named accountability. Sectoral bargaining where tacit knowledge is deep. Engineered knowledge diffusion where it is not. And an order-of-magnitude expansion of how we send Singaporeans to where cutting-edge knowledge actually lives.

Capability is tacit knowledge. It deepens inside sectors and firms, which is why we need sectoral architecture that holds workers there long enough for it to form. And it circulates through an industrial commons – which is why we need engineers, instructors, and Singaporeans abroad moving through that commons, carrying knowledge with them. The state is an orchestrator, it builds the architecture in which both happen. Thank you.

Mr Speaker: Mr Sanjeev Tiwari.

5.50 pm

Mr Sanjeev Kumar Tiwari (Nominated Member): Mr Speaker, I declare my interest that SSG and WSG are represented by the Amalgamated Union of Public Employees where I am the general secretary, and the new agency will be in due course.

Mr Speaker, across Singapore today, as many of the hon Members have highlighted as well, there is much anxiety among workers. In the PME who has just been made redundant, in the fresh graduate sending out applications that go unanswered, in the 58-year-old who wonders if anyone will hire him again, in the caregiver who stepped away for five years now does not know how to step back in.

These are not statistics. These are people. And they are watching us today. They want to know how will SWDA do better.

I rise to support this Bill because the merger of SSG and WSG is just not good policy. It is the right thing to do for every Singaporean worker.

Mr Speaker, for years we have operated with the logical but limiting division of labour: SSG accredited courses and administered SkillsFuture credits; WSG managed career conversion, hiring incentives and improved job matching. Two agencies, two mandates, two systems.

But here is the truth: learning and working are not two separate journeys. They are one.

When these two functions live in separate houses, workers and jobseekers fall through the gaps between them. They complete a course and find no pathway to a job. They get placed in a job with no support to grow. We called it an ecosystem. For many workers, it felt like a maze.

The merger closes that gap. It signals that a course without a career pathway is incomplete and a job placement without skills development is unsustainable.

Mr Speaker, training is not the destination. It is the vehicle. We have celebrated completion rates. We have counted the number of courses taken, credits used, certificates earned. While those numbers matter, they are not the finish line.

The finish line is this: did training lead to a better job? A higher wage? A worker who feels more secure, more valued, more able to provide for their family?

Because if a worker sacrifices evenings and weekends to attend training, pushes through self-doubt and emerges with a certificate that leads nowhere or worse, leads to a job that pays the same, or continues receiving job application rejections as before, then we have failed them. The training system has taken their time, resources and their hope but have returned nothing of real value.

The new agency's mandate must be clear: measure outcomes, not just outputs.

What does real outcome look like? An increase in real wages. Progression to a higher-value role, not a lateral transfer, not a downgrade. A worker with the dignity of a career that moves forward and upwards.

Course accreditation must no longer ask only if this course is well-designed? It must ask: does this course lead to real employment and real outcomes? Does it lead to wage and career progression? Is it connected to industries that are hiring, and hiring at fair wages?

The merged agency now has access to both SSG's training ecosystem and WSG's employment data. It can see both sides of the equation. That intelligence must be used boldly.

And to employers, I say this directly: the social compact must be both ways. When a worker reskills, their wage, the title must reflect that upgrade. Hiring a reskilled worker at the same salary as before is not transformation; it is tokenism.

Better training must mean better jobs. Better jobs must mean better wages. Better wages must mean better lives. Every link in that chain must hold.

Mr Speaker, I would like to make three specific calls.

First, publish the outcomes that matter. I urge the new agency to track and publish time-to-placement, wage growth post-training and job-fit rates. Not buried in annual reports. Visible, searchable, accountable – these indicators will help to keep the system honest.

Second, scale sector-level transformation to reach SMEs. We already have strong models. The SkillsFuture Queen Bee initiative, working alongside NTUC's Company Training Committees, has delivered real results. At ST Engineering, jobs were redesigned, workers were upgraded, productivity improved. Through the SSG-NTUC-FairPrice Group partnership, 1,000 workers across their SME supplier network are being upskilled, lifting the entire ecosystem, not just one company.

But these remain uneven successes. Many SMEs are not plugged into these ecosystems. This is why SWDA should leverage the upcoming Tripartite Jobs Council more as a greater partner than just a consultative forum. It should see the Tripartite Jobs Council as a driver on the ground coordination amidst all this AI disruption, to bring about sector-wide transformation so that good jobs and sustained careers reach whole industries and not just flagship firms.

SWDA should see the advantages of tapping on the strengths of tripartite partners like NTUC and the Singapore National Employers Federation to reach the employers and workers.

Third, worker voice in governance. SWDA will make decisions that directly shape livelihoods and career paths of hundreds of Singaporeans. I ask: will there be worker representation at the board level and not just through consultations but as part of the governance structure itself?

A worker voice is not symbolic. It grounds the agency in reality whether training leads to real jobs, whether transitions are navigable, whether policies reflect what happens in the workplaces.

Mr Speaker, this promise must reach everyone. For mid-career workers, the new agency must be a lifeline. Income support, skills training and job placement must be delivered as a package and not patchwork. A worker who needs six months to reskill cannot survive on willpower alone. And at the end of that journey, there must be a job waiting.

For senior workers above 50, we must be honest. Ageism still exists in our hiring landscape. The new agency must not just train senior workers, it must work aggressively with employers to shift mindsets. Senior workers bring institutional knowledge, emotional intelligence and resilience that no algorithm can replicate. They must be placed in roles that honour their experience and not sidelined beneath their capabilities.

For lower-income workers and those without degrees: the SkillsFuture movement has always risked being captured by the already-advantaged. The new agency must reach down to these workers, not wait for them to come to the agency. Community outreach, vernacular language support, simplified processes and critically, training pathways that lead to genuine wage progression because they have the most to gain.

For young people from ITE and polytechnics, do not assume that they have it easy. Many feel invisible in a system that celebrates degrees. The ITE Work-Study Diploma has grown from four courses and 100 trainees to 45 courses and 1,600 trainees in 2025. The new agency must amplify this, creating celebrated, visible pathway for skills-based careers with competitive wages and real advancement so that choosing skills over a degree is never seen as settling.

Mr Speaker, the new agency must have these three principles to carry forward.

First, seamlessness. The same agency that funds your course must connect you to a job that values those skills and tracks whether your wages have improved. One account, one advisor, one journey.

Two, intelligence. Labour market data must ensure we never train workers for yesterday's economy. The agency must stay ahead of industry shifts, and recalibrate constantly measuring success in real wages and real career growth.

Humanity. Data and dashboards matter. But what matters more is that every Singaporean who walks into a career centre, logs onto a portal or calls a helpline feels seen, feels that someone genuinely is in their corner, not to tick a box, but to walk with them until they reach a better place.

Mr Speaker, in conclusion, I welcome the provisions ensuring that SSG and WSG officers transfer on terms no less favourable. These officers have built deep expertise, they are not just assets to be reorganised, they are the people who will deliver this transformation. They deserve clarity, investment and pathways to grow alongside the agency that they are building.

The merger of SSG and WSG gives us the chance to build something better: a single, powerful, compassionate agency that does not just create programmes to train and place workers but to transform their lives. Because better training must lead to better jobs. Better jobs must lead to better wages. And better wages must lead to better lives for every Singaporean, without an exception. No worker left behind. One agency. One vision. Mr Speaker, I support the Bill. [Applause.]

Mr Speaker: Dr Hamid Razak.

6.00 pm

Dr Hamid Razak (West Coast-Jurong West): Mr Speaker, Sir, I rise in support of the SWDA Bill. This is a significant and forward-looking Bill. It reflects a deeper shift in how we think about jobs, skills and careers in Singapore.

At its core, this Bill recognises a structural reality, that skills development and employment outcomes can no longer be treated as separate policy domains. So, training and employment must connect more tightly, not only in policy design, but in how Singaporeans experience the system.

The merger of SSG and WSG into a single agency is therefore not just an administrative consolidation. It is a deliberate move towards a more integrated, end-to-end workforce system. In the next decade, we should be measuring success by not how many courses a worker attends but how many transitions are completed into good jobs with progression.

Mr Speaker, Sir, my first point is about integrating with the labour market.

Today, training and employment are delivered by separate agencies and both have done commendable work. But separation can create a gap. Skills are acquired, but jobs may not follow. Workers may complete courses without clear pathways into employment. At the same time, employers may report difficulty finding job-ready talent.

Some residents have shared these concerns with me. They are middle-aged, mid-career PMETs who have lost their jobs. They made the effort to upskill. They used their SkillsFuture subsidies and trained in areas like AI, data analysis and project management. Yet despite their efforts, they still find it difficult to secure work that is commensurate with their skills and seniority. Some have also shared that while they are prepared to learn, they are less clear about what a realistic entry point looks like when moving into a brand new sector.

Mr Speaker, Sir, one issue I have observed is expectations. When some mid-career workers used SkillsFuture to take courses in high demand areas like AI, data or project management, product management, they may understandably hope to re-enter at the same level of seniority and remuneration they previously held.

But in practice, they are competing with candidates who already have track records in these sectors and employers may be hiring for proven experience, not only course completion. When outcomes do not match expectations, some become discouraged, disgruntled and conclude that their training did not work even though the real barrier may be the entry point into a new industry.

This raises a policy question for the new agency. Could the Minister clarify how the new agency will position SkillsFuture as a pathway for sector entry and conversion or as a pathway for in sector progression? Because the citizens advice and expectations differ in each case. If we try to signal both at once, we risk sending mixed messages and confusing citizens at the very point that they seek and need clarity.

I therefore suggest that the new agency consider finetuning SkillsFuture into clearer pathways. One pathway could focus on sector entry and conversion with transparent expectations on likely starting roles, salary ranges and the additional steps needed beyond courses, such as supervised projects, apprenticeship or structured workplace attachments. Another pathway could then focus on progression for those who are already in the sector where SkillsFuture support deeper specialisation and advancement of skills.

This distinction will make the citizen journey clearer and help training translate more reliable into hiring outcomes. So, the key issue here is not willingness of the individual. It is linkage. The linkage between training choices, employer recognition and hiring outcomes. Courses build capability but pathways will build confidence.

The new agency presents an opportunity to close this gap. It can move us towards a system where training is not only supply-driven but aligned to real labour market demand. And it can make pathways clearer at the point where a worker must decide what he must do, he or she must do next.

But integration is not automatic. It takes coordination. It takes timely intelligence. And it takes a clear focus on outcomes. I therefore seek clarification from the Minister on how the new agency will define and track success. For example, will the agency track placement rates within six to 12 months? Job match quality? Wage outcomes? And progression over time, especially for mid-career switches?

Ultimately, the goal must be simple. Every Singaporean who invests his time and effort into upgrading should see a meaningful return, in real employment opportunity.

Mr Speaker, Sir, my second point relates to a life-course approach to workforce development. Many Singaporeans may have to reskill and pivot multiple times in their career. So, workforce support cannot be activated only when one loses a job or signs up for a course. It must be continuous, anticipatory and personalised.

Some workers may also need more flexible routes to sustain household income during these transition phases, including fractional work arrangements or micro-entrepreneurship, where appropriate. But for many, the barrier is not motivation. It is time. It is confidence. And it is navigation.

The formation of this new agency provides an opportunity to move in that direction. With a unified view of skills and employment data, the agency can offer more proactive, tailored and personalised support. It can identify at-risk workers earlier, guide them towards the relevant training and support smoother transitions into new roles.

At the same time, I seek clarification on how the agency intends to balance standardisation and customisation. A centralised and standardised system of course can achieve efficiency. But it must remain responsive to diverse needs. This includes mid-career professionals, lower-wage workers, gig workers, those in emerging sectors and those returning to work after caregiving responsibilities. In other words, Mr Speaker, Sir, the system must be integrated, but it cannot become impersonal.

Mr Speaker, Sir, my third point relates to equity. Singapore has achieved high participation in training programmes. But participation alone does not necessarily translate into equitable outcomes.

We must ensure the benefits of this integrated system are accessible to all, especially those who need it most. This includes lower-income workers, those with lower educational attainment and workers in sectors undergoing disruption. Those in the low buffer households. Equity is not just about access to training. It is also about whether the system is navigable for those with the least time, least confidence and least support.

We should also recognise a practical constraint here. The ability to upgrade while in employment is not available to all. While we have encouraged employers to send workers for training, companies may still prioritise those who are already seen as higher potential. More vulnerable workers can be overlooked or sidelined and this becomes a compounding disadvantage when they eventually face displacement.

Moreover, a number of disadvantaged Singaporeans work beyond their main jobs to supplement household incomes. Others face health and family constraints. These realities limit their capacity to train after hours.

I would therefore ask the Minister how the new agency will ensure that these training pathways remain accessible and relevant to these groups I have mentioned. How will support be sufficiently intensive to those who face greater barriers? And how will outcomes be tracked, not just in aggregate, but across different segments of the workforce? Because if the system is seamless only for those already in advantaged positions, then it truly is not seamless.

Mr Speaker, Sir, the SWDA Bill represents a significant step forward in how Singapore approaches workforce policy. It shifts us from separate interventions towards a more integrated, continuous and responsive system.

But integration cannot be just WSG and SSG shaking hands. Our residents must feel that their hands are held throughout the employment journey. With these comments, Mr Speaker, Sir, I support the Bill.

Mr Speaker: Assoc Prof Terence Ho.

6.09 pm

Assoc Prof Terence Ho (Nominated Member): Mr Speaker, I declare my interest as the Executive Director of the Institute for Adult Learning, which receives funding from SSG.

Like many other Members of this House, I welcome the merger of the SSG and WSG agencies to form SWDA. The merits of this merger are clear: it will align training closely with labour market needs, strengthening the nexus between training, employability and employment outcomes. It will also improve the user experience for workers and jobseekers who tap on the two agencies' funding and online resources for their skills and career development. Likewise, enterprises that receive public funding for skills and workforce development will have a more seamless interface with the Government.

With significant workforce disruption on the horizon, the formation of SWDA would strengthen the ecosystem of support for workers to reskill and invest in their career health.

Notwithstanding, there are several points I would like to seek the Minister's clarification on.

Since the launch of the SkillsFuture movement in 2015, the IHLs have pivoted from focusing mainly on PET to also embracing CET, building up their CET course offerings and becoming partners in lifelong learning for their students and graduates.

As the new agency is under MOM, how will it ensure that this momentum is not lost, and that the IHLs will continue to develop as institutions of lifelong learning? In particular, how will MOM coordinate with MOE to provide direction to SWDA on CET?

While Singapore's lifelong learning efforts must support employability, there are other objectives as well. Besides working adults, retirees too must be encouraged to continue learning to keep their minds supple and engaged. Hence, I would like to clarify whether SWDA will actively promote lifelong learning that is not targeted at employment. Will the agency give sufficient attention to the broader aims of lifelong learning as well, particularly given Singapore's growing senior population?

With the formation of SWDA, there is opportunity to merge or streamline the myskillsfuture and mycareersfuture online portals for a more seamless user journey for those looking to reskill for new jobs and careers. I would like to ask what the plans are for the two portals, and in particular, how user experience can be improved.

The Government is investing considerable resources in training and reskilling. This gives substance to the creed that every worker matters, and to the commitment that every worker who wishes to will be supported to reskill for new jobs and careers, even as technology transforms work. At the same time, it is important to ensure that public money is well spent – and this is a point that many in the House have raised. Two questions follow.

First, while the Bill addresses abusive funding arrangements and false or misleading advertisements, including setting out penalties and remedial measures, I would like to ask if the Ministry could elaborate on the steps that will be taken to reduce the risk of fraud or abuse of grants.

Second, and this is critical, could the Ministry share how it will assess the returns on investment in training. For instance, will SWDA monitor how skills acquired through training are deployed at the workplace and assess their impact on employment outcomes? It may be timely for a systematic evaluation of the various SSG and WSG programmes to determine which ought to be scaled up and conversely, which ought to be scaled back or discontinued.

On training grants, funding for WSQ courses is based on the number of trainees who successfully complete and pass the course. While training providers should select students carefully and equip them to succeed, it is to be expected that a small number of trainees will fail to complete or pass the course. It is also important to avoid a situation where because of financial considerations, there is pressure on adult educators to do no more than teach to the test or even pass students who in fact do not make the mark. I would like to ask what steps can be taken to minimise such risks. For instance, could training providers be compensated for trainees who do not manage to pass the course – say up to five or 10% of a class – since the training providers would have incurred costs for these trainees?

In this era of rapid change, training and learning must be nimble and responsive to changing market needs. Training providers may need a "fail fast, learn fast" approach in launching new courses or experimenting with new teaching methods or technologies.

How will SWDA ensure timely course approval, balancing quality considerations with the need for speed in mounting new courses or updating curricula in response to changing technology and job demands?

While a certain risk tolerance is needed for innovation and agility, funding should also reward impact and steer support towards training that proves effective. In this regard, are there plans to review grant structure and KPIs to incentivise desired outcomes from training, beyond training placement and completion rates?

Ultimately, workers must take responsibility in planning for their career and skills development needs. They must invest proactively in career health and not just act when their jobs and livelihoods are at imminent risk. How then can SWDA help to foster agency in individuals to do so? What new approaches, if any, will the agency take in engaging workers?

For learning to bring tangible benefit to enterprises and organisations, it must move beyond episodic programmes and courses to become deeply embedded in organisational strategy and DNA. Data from the OECD's Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies suggest that for innovation-intensive workplaces, non-formal and informal learning are most prevalent. Formal training must therefore be complemented and integrated with workplace learning.

In this regard, how can SWDA help enterprises become learning organisations where there is strong alignment between business strategy and people strategy, and where learning takes place in the flow of work? Can learning at work be codified and skills recognised to facilitate portability, such as through portfolio-based recognition or skills credentialling? How does SWDA plan to scale impact across the large number of SMEs in different industries that need support?

This House will shortly debate a Motion on an AI Transition with No Jobless Growth. The future of work and the human contribution to work are fundamental to Singapore's social compact. How can Singapore build up expertise in human-centric job redesign so that wherever possible, AI will augment rather than replace human capabilities? How can SWDA help organisations build capability in job redesign and workplace learning? Embedding capabilities within organisations is key, as job redesign and reskilling are not a one-off exercise, but something that enterprises and organisations will have to go through repeatedly as technology continually reshapes work.

Skills-first employment practices will be critical in the new ecosystem of learning and work. This means recognising skills rather than just academic credentials as the primary currency for recruitment, career development and advancement. This provides more mobility for workers, so that their career paths are not constrained by their past educational backgrounds. It also helps employers tap on a wider pool of talent and utilise employee skills more fully. For these reasons, skills-first practices are important for job market efficiency.

I would, therefore, like to ask whether the new agency will continue to champion skills-first employment practices and what more can be done to facilitate and accelerate that adoption of skills-first practices by employers, workers and training providers.

Mr Speaker, the formation of the SWDA will position Singapore strongly as a leader in lifelong learning, career resilience and human-centric job redesign, provided there is sustained investment in research and talent to build expertise in these areas. The Institute for Adult Learning, as the national centre of excellence in adult learning, stands ready to support SWDA in this important work. What is at stake is nothing less than Singapore's work-based social compact. And for this reason, I support the Bill.

Mr Speaker: Mr Shawn Loh.

6.18 pm

Mr Shawn Loh (Jalan Besar): Mr Speaker, I first declare my interest as group managing director of Commonwealth Capital Group. We steward more than 1,000 livelihoods and interact with Government agencies on workforce development initiatives.

Mr Speaker, there is a storm outside – literally. You could hear the thunder just now. Thankfully, I am from the Party that uses lightning as a symbol and we are not afraid of storms.

There are also other storms in the world today. And this Bill provides for a change that is an appropriate response to inexorable trends from these storms, trends that I highlighted in my maiden Parliamentary speech – that the technology cycle has shortened significantly and therefore, skills are becoming obsolete faster.

At the same time, we are living longer. If you combine these two trends, the natural conclusion is that the traditional "learn, work, retire" trajectory is a relic of the past. A young Singaporean today may have to navigate a 50-year career spanning multiple companies and perhaps, quite possibly multiple industries.

We can, therefore, no longer rely on what we learnt in pre-employment training to carry us through to retirement. Perhaps, there may even come a point in time that we learnt in the first year of tertiary education will become irrelevant by the time we graduate. We see this manifest in greater anxieties across the workforce, especially on the faces of new graduates and older PMETs. I have spoken to many in Jalan Besar and Whampoa-Boon Keng and I feel for them.

The new integrated SWDA reflects two important generational shifts for our system.

First, a shift from focusing on education only before getting a job, towards continuing education and training throughout the lifetime. This is a clear direction, given that SSG and all of its resources would effectively be moving from MOE to MOM.

I support this. But I also hope we will retain some of the strengths of the earlier model at MOE, which developed a strong nexus between our IHLs and the SkillsFuture movement. MOE could and should maintain some level of oversight and accountability. Perhaps, the Government should consider appointing one of our MOE political officeholders to have a secondary role at MOM. I am sure the Minister for Manpower would welcome that extra help.

Yet, this is only the first step. The longer-term question is how to redirect more of our limited resources and efforts towards continuing education and training. We have to move away from the mindset that a degree or a diploma is the be-all and end-all of learning. In fact, it is but the start of a lifetime of acquiring and applying new skills.

I sometimes wonder why we need to cram so much knowledge into our students before they join the workforce. Is it not better to provide a shorter duration of pre-employment training and to redirect more resources to mid-career training programmes?

The second shift is a shift from a supply-driven model that is less likely to lead to a job, to a demand-led model, which is closer to the employers and to the marketplace. I have also mentioned in Parliament before about the need to be more focussed with our Government-funded programmes to move away from SkillsFuture programmes that are unlikely to lead to employment which, in my mind, is not an effective use of the Government's resources.

We all have residents who tell us that they attend SkillsFuture courses, thinking that they would find jobs, only to be bitterly disappointed. As many Members of Parliament, like Dr Wan Rizal said, we do not want a situation where Singaporeans are spending time and effort to learn skills that employers simply do not want.

It is therefore better to put these resources into the hands of those who are most likely to know which skills are valued. These are the employers who compete daily in the marketplace to stay relevant. They are our best bet to forward-sense the demand signals of a constantly changing market. These are also our trade associations and our unions, who are able to aggregate demand across multiple employers. In fact, Mr Kenneth Tiong also spoke about trade associations and accrediting training. So, perhaps the political officeholder at MOE and MOM can also have a role at NTUC: three-in-one, like the coffee, and we need to give a caffeine boost to our skills and workforce development initiatives.

Therefore, I hope that SWDA under MOM will have renewed focus and an increase in resources to support enterprise-led on-the-job training as well as training only if it is accredited by trade associations or our unions. We should move away from short-term SkillsFuture courses that do not have good employment outcomes.

By helping companies to hire workers first and then train them on the job, the skills being taught are immediately relevant and utilised for both employers and employees. And in a world where younger workers may find themselves irrelevant, we should not discriminate against long-term jobseekers by age. Anyone looking for a job for more than six months, even a recent graduate, should qualify for the same support.

And as a final point, just as we want employers and employees to be adaptable and agile, I hope the SWDA will, likewise, be the same. The agency must be adaptable enough to embrace the uncertainty that we cannot possibly know which skills are in demand in the future. These jobs have not even been created.

The agency must also be agile enough to work within a changing landscape of partners, such as the e2i and the new Tripartite Jobs Council, for the delivery of programmes. I hope that MOM can also clarify how there will be synergies and not a duplication of programmes.

Overall, as many other Members have said, the success of the SWDA will depend on how we can structure the right incentives and measure the right outcomes.

The right incentives, so that any training provider knows that we are looking for good long term employment outcomes and not just a good course feedback form. The right incentives, so that employers are able to train more workers to acquire the right skills and stay employable, instead of expecting to only hire workers after they are fully trained. And most importantly, the right incentives, so that employees have greater assurance that if they put in effort to find a job or to go for training, they will have a better chance of growing with a good job.

Mr Speaker, I support the Bill and let us weather the next storm together.

Mr Speaker: Dr Neo Kok Beng.

6.26 pm

Dr Neo Kok Beng (Nominated Member): Mr Speaker, Sir, I would like to state that I am a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers and also an Adjunct Professor at the Singapore Institute of Technology.

As a practising engineer and an active educator, I have dedicated my career to the mastery of professional skills and the transfer of industry relevant knowledge to the workforce or through the CET programmes. I have been in CET training for more than 10 years and I am honoured to be awarded the SkillsFuture Fellowship in 2023.

The merger of SSG and WSG is a relevant one in our job-skills ecosystems. I think the more important thing is to make sure that the input, the training and the skills and acquisitions, link directly to the output which are relevant jobs and a high-value career.

I would like to emphasise on certain points which we can make the links tighter.

First, recognition. The recognition of the training or the skills is the currency of the labour market. For many specialised roles, a certificate of completion is not sufficient. My industry, like engineering or the built environment, and cybersecurity, all the industries that basically operate on a system of professional accreditation.

In these sectors, specific jobs require certified training and accumulated experience that then result in formal industry recognition. Without this, even the most hardworking worker may find their career progression stalled because they lack the "professional currency" for higher-tier employment. That means that for the new agency, collaborations or the integration of the career pathway of professionals will be very important in the skills training.

Professional institutions, whether it is accounting or corporate secretaries or insurance, they have well-defined pathway for career progression based on expertise and experience, or capabilities and competencies. Our employers recognise such industrial accreditation and certification for their skills mastery.

As a SkillsFuture Fellow and a trainer, I have seen many talented individuals pick up different skillsets, maybe a little bit haphazardly, but struggle to have these skills "counted" toward the professional titles. If SWDA can align our skills frameworks with the accreditation standards of these professional institutions, then we will have turned "lifelong learning" into "lifelong career advancement".

As an example, in engineering or in the Institution of Engineers, Singapore, we have three tiers – from chartered technicians to chartered technologists, to chartered engineers. Depending on the academic level, you enter at different stages, then you can continue to progress based on the experience you acquire and also the course and skills mastery that you achieve. It is not necessary for you to get a degree in order to become a chartered engineer. You can actually progress through your skills mastery through experience and expertise.

So, let me give an example – we have chartered engineers in system engineering and we can have chartered technicians in railway. And so, you can continue to progress.

I would like to suggest that SWDA partner closely with the professional institutions and the authorised training providers, which includes the universities and the polytechnics, to develop training programmes and courses that are aligned with professional accreditations. Which means that, when they are developing the modules or the courses, they must make sure that the professional institutions are involved and can recognise such courses and also the experiences that are being acquired.

So, we must ensure that the skills we develop are the same skills that the industry rewards. By closely integrating the link between training and professional accreditation, we will provide our workforce with more than just knowledge. We provide them with a recognised professional career pathway.

6.31 pm

Mr Speaker: Deputy Leader.

Debate resumed.

Mr Speaker: Ms Gho Sze Kee.

6.32 pm

Ms Gho Sze Kee (Mountbatten): Mr Speaker, I support the Bill. It is clear that our workforce faces significant challenges today.

In the recent Committee of Supply debate on manpower, I highlighted the critical need to refresh our career and employment services ecosystem and the need for a new compact among all the stakeholders.

I also noted the critical role of the Government. The Government is uniquely positioned to identify emerging trends, anticipate disruptions and take a macro helicopter view. This perspective allows it to connect the dots across education, training and employment, and to align stakeholders to the evolving needs of our economy.

The macro mission of the new SWDA dovetails with what I have outlined, and one can clearly see the potential for great synergy in addressing the challenges faced by both workers and employers.

Sir, WSG and SSG have been around for some time and I see this merger as a chance to take stock and recalibrate. There is no better time to ask some hard questions. What is the mission of this new agency? What does success look like? What are the metrics and the KPIs that we are measuring success with? How do we know that public resources are deployed efficiently and impactfully? These are important questions, and I will explain why.

Mr Speaker, an entire industry has sprung up around SkillsFuture training since its inception. There are thousands of courses and hundreds of training providers. Let me share some examples.

There are courses on Japanese finger painting and finger knitting. There is a course listed titled "武侠小说系列探索", aimed at letting seniors relive their youth. There are courses on mindfulness, well-being and many on wine appreciation.

One could argue that wine appreciation may be relevant for some professionals, but I was rather taken aback to learn that such classes are popular because participants can enjoy wine and snacks at lower costs than a wine bar, especially when fees are covered by SkillsFuture credits. There appears to be an attitude that since this is public money, one might as well spend it.

Some of these courses are eligible for both subsidies and credit usage. One example is a course on basic washroom cleaning, a useful life skill perhaps. But I was surprised to discover that this course was offered by a provider that specialises in wine appreciation.

Sir, I would be very happy to host such lifestyle and wellness classes at Mountbatten Community Club. But as we move forward, some hard questions must be asked. Do these courses truly align with the mission of the SkillsFuture movement and the broader mission of the new agency? Is SkillsFuture the appropriate funding mechanism for them or would agencies like the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth or the People's Association be more suitable platforms? Do such courses consume credits that could be deployed more impactfully elsewhere? Do they dilute the mission and blur our understanding of how successful the scheme really is?

We should also ask how courses are curated. Do they genuinely enhance skills employability? Are trainees the intended audience? Are they taking these courses to upgrade themselves meaningfully and are the training providers suitably qualified?

Sir, SkillsFuture has been an impactful initiative. My intention is not to criticise but to ask how we can do better. I recognise the challenges of scaling and curating a large ecosystem, but this merger should bring renewed clarity and focus on higher objectives.

To that end, I would like to make a suggestion. While some people have not used their SkillsFuture credits at all, others have deeply embraced lifelong learning. Many of them are PMETs, a group significantly impacted by disruption. They take specialised courses, stack micro credentials and pursue professional qualifications. These pathways are more costly, but they are also more impactful.

The $4,000 mid-career top-up provides a meaningful baseline, but for these individuals, it may not be enough. We should review our approach to SkillsFuture credit caps. Instead of a one-size fits-all approach, we should consider providing greater support to those who demonstrate a commitment to continuous upgrading. By doing so, we encourage deeper, more purposeful learning and better support workers who take charge of their career health, and strive to remain relevant and competitive. To me, those who are willing to put in more effort to better themselves deserves more support. We should give it to them.

Lastly, Sir, I end with an observation. The most critical stakeholder here is the individual worker. Everything that we are doing today – upskilling, AI initiatives, career services – prepares workers for the jobs of tomorrow. But we must also prepare them for the jobs of the day after tomorrow. What would that look like?

The truth is, we simply do not know. So, how do we prepare? We foster not just lifelong learning but also resilience and adaptability. The worker who thrives is not just one with the right skills but one with the right mindset, one who is agile, embraces change and is comfortable with uncertainty.

This must start in our schools. Our education system must equip our young, not just with knowledge but with the ability to adapt, pivot and confront the unknown. We must teach them grit. If we can align a well-calibrated system with a workforce that is resilient, agile and continuously learning, then we will be in a very strong position to meet the challenges ahead.

Mr Speaker: Mr Darryl David.

6.39 pm

Mr Darryl David (Ang Mo Kio): Mr Speaker, over the past two decades, we have invested heavily in building a national culture of lifelong learning. The former WDA, established in 2003, responded to structural shifts in our economy with a clear mandate – strengthen employability through a more systematic approach to skills development and CET. It did so through initiatives, such as the WSQ framework, accreditation of training providers and funding for job-relevant courses.

In 2016, WDA was restructured into two agencies – SSG, which focuses on skills training, CET and SkillsFuture policy; and WSG, which focuses on job design, career coaching and job matching. This separation was deliberate. Each agency addressed a different part of the employment cycle, with SSG adopting perhaps a "train first, and then find jobs" approach and WSG, a "find jobs, then train" model.

However, if we assess how the system operates today, then several issues present themselves.

The "train first, then find jobs" approach runs the risk of creating incentives for training providers to prioritise course volume over employment outcomes. Some providers secure accreditation without clear evidence of labour market demand or meaningful links to career progression and then market these courses aggressively, sometimes targeting vulnerable groups, such as the elderly. Sometimes these courses are promoted with limited actual career pathways.

As a result, SkillsFuture risked being seen less as a national upskilling effort and more as a commercial opportunity for some providers. The system is now crowded with courses of uneven quality, making it difficult for individuals to identify those that genuinely improve employability.

At the same time, the signalling value of SkillsFuture certifications has possibly weakened over time. Employers cannot always distinguish between courses that build real capabilities and those that do not and therefore, do not consistently recognise these certifications with perhaps the same confidence as qualifications from our IHLs. This, again, weakens the link between training and hiring, and diminishes the value of the effort individuals invest in upskilling.

The "find jobs, then train" approach takes a different approach to the issue and faces a different constraint. Employers hire to meet immediate needs and prioritise candidates who can perform from the outset. It is what they typically do. But for mid-career workers seeking to switch industries, this creates somewhat of a structural barrier. They must demonstrate skills and experience they have not yet had the opportunity to acquire, making it a bit challenging and sometimes even difficult to access new roles not even when training support is available.

Taken together, these approaches are not flawed in intent, but they are incomplete in isolation. One allows training to drift away from validated job demand and the other reflects demand but does not create sufficient entry points for those without prior experience. So, the core issue is a lack of alignment between training, jobs and career progression.

And this is precisely why the shift towards an integrated "train-for-jobs" model under SWDA is both timely and necessary. By bringing together career guidance, skills development and job placement into a coherent system, we can better support Singaporeans across every stage of their working lives.

Sir, to correct current misalignments in the system, our funding model must shift decisively. Today, funding largely follows enrolment and course completion, that is, a participation-based funding model. But participation in courses alone is not the objective. The real measure of success is whether training improves a person's working life, whether training improves their life as a whole, whether it leads to employment, enables a career transition or results in wage progression.

I would therefore propose a move towards a more explicit outcome-based funding model. Under this approach, funding for training providers is tied to tangible career outcomes, such as job placement, successful transitions and wage growth, with part of the funding possibly deferred until these outcomes are achieved. This anchors the system in real economic value. Providers must demonstrate not only that individuals attend courses but that they benefit meaningfully in the labour market.

This shift brings three key benefits.

First, it raises the quality of training. Providers will now be incentivised or will be motivated to design programmes aligned with validated market demand and deliver practical, job-relevant skills. Such courses will need to deliver these skills that can be translated into employable outcomes rather than just simply meeting accreditation requirements.

Second, it corrects misaligned incentives that have led to unintended outcomes, including the proliferation of low-value courses and those marketed aggressively to various vulnerable groups, as I mentioned earlier. An outcome-based funding model reduces the viability of such offerings and re-focuses the ecosystem on meaningful skills development.

Third, and critically, it restores the credibility and employer recognition of SkillsFuture certifications. Today, as I said before, these certifications are possibly not consistently valued in the same way as qualifications from our IHLs, due to uneven quality, and some employers might not even be prepared to rely on SkillsFuture certifications as indicators of job readiness.

By strengthening outcome-based discipline, we improve quality assurance, build employer trust and position SkillsFuture certificates as credible signals of capability, not just proof of course completion. This marks an important shift from participation to labour market signalling.

At the same time, we must be clear, Sir, about the purpose of SkillsFuture. It is fundamentally an instrument of economic mobility and employability. Its primary role is to help Singaporeans access better jobs, transition across sectors and progress in their careers.

Of course, this will not diminish the importance of personal enrichment. Learning for interest, creativity or well-being remains valuable. However, we should distinguish clearly between hobby-related learning or interest-related and job-linked training.

One way forward is a two-tier system. With Tier One focusing on job-linked training, with stronger subsidies tied to clear employment outcomes. Tier Two, perhaps, could support personal enrichment, where individuals may still use their SkillsFuture credits, but with limited or no additional subsidies and with a mandatory co-payment requirement.

This preserves the spirit of lifelong learning while sharpening policy focus. It directs public resources toward workforce outcomes without losing the broader benefits of learning for personal growth.

Sir, beyond funding, we must address a broader structural issue – coherence across the CET ecosystem.

We have built substantial CET capacity across our IHLs, each offering a wide range of programmes through their respective CET centres. While this improves course access and diversity, we have yet to achieve coherence across the system. Courses from different IHLs could possibly overlap, compete or lack clear differentiation, leading to duplication and inefficiencies.

The establishment of SWDA creates an opportunity to address this. SWDA can serve as a national planner, a coordinator, of CET supply and an aggregator of demand signals across sectors. It can coordinate sector-based course mapping to align programmes with industry needs and establish clearer differentiation across institutions. For example, ITE focusing on applied skills, polytechnics on industry practice and autonomous universities on advanced and specialised domains. This allows institutions to complement rather than compete with one another.

At the same time, if SWDA is to deliver end-to-end support, we must look upstream. Today, the system engages individuals largely after they enter the workforce or when they are actively seeking employment. But misalignment often begins earlier, when students make decisions about subject combinations, courses of study and career pathways without possibly a clear understanding of what labour market realities are.

We should, therefore, treat career guidance as a sort of early intervention policy. SWDA can work through strategic partnerships with IHL career centres and, where appropriate, with even MOE's education and career guidance ecosystem in secondary schools, junior colleges and so on. This is not about expanding SWDA's mandates, but about better aligning existing efforts. By connecting career guidance, training pathways and job opportunities, we can reduce downstream mismatches and give young Singaporeans greater clarity and confidence in navigating their careers at an early age.

Mr Speaker, the establishment of SWDA is not merely an administrative merger. It represents a fundamental shift in how we think about work, skills and mobility in Singapore.

This is not just about improving training systems. It is about how Singapore competes in an economy where industries reconfigure quickly, job roles evolve constantly and the shelf-life of skills continues to shorten. Our advantage can no longer rest on static qualifications. It must rest on a system that enables continuous adaptation.

In this economy where jobs evolve faster than qualifications, our system must evolve faster than jobs. We must give every Singaporean the confidence to move across roles, sectors and stages of life without being constrained by outdated skills or unclear pathways. We must strengthen not only employability, but also the dignity of work where the effort to upskill is recognised and where transitions are supported.

As we strengthen this system, Sir, we should recognise that more than a million Singaporeans have already utilised their initial SkillsFuture credits. If lifelong learning is to remain a national strategy, it is timely to consider a further tranche of SkillsFuture credit, carefully calibrated and aligned with an outcome-based approach. This will signal continued commitment while reinforcing the importance of using these public resources meaningfully.

Ultimately, the success of SWDA will be measured by whether Singaporeans feel more confident navigating change whether they can learn, adapt and progress with assurance. That is the system we must build: one that supports mobility, rewards effort and outcome, and gives every Singaporean the confidence to step forward, even as the ground beneath them continues to shift.

Mr Speaker: Ms Elysa Chen.

6.51 pm

Ms Elysa Chen (Bishan-Toa Payoh): Mr Speaker, we used to think of building our careers as climbing a ladder of success – a clear, upward climb where each rung represents a promotion, a new qualification or a better job. If one works hard and steadily, one is expected to move up.

But in today's economy, that is no longer the case.

A more accurate image may be a rock wall – one that is constantly changing and where there is no single fixed path upwards. Different holds appear at different times. Some routes are visible only to those who have been guided or trained to see them. Success is no longer simply climbing higher in a straight line but about knowing where to move next, which skills to build, how to switch routes entirely and being able to try again after falling from the rock wall.

This Bill responds to that reality. It supports Singaporeans in navigating a changing labour market by bringing skills and jobs under one roof through a new SWDA, so that Singaporeans experience a more integrated and truly "no wrong door" system.

I support this Bill because it strengthens three things: it clarifies our mission; it tightens our safeguards; it lays the foundation for a lifelong and person-centred view of work.

First, on clarifying our mission. I would like to share Mr Lim Boon Cheng's experience when he was laid off suddenly. He took a SkillsFuture course in coffee-making and with a strong, enterprising spirit, he launched Hans Coffee, a hole-in-the wall cafe right in the heart of a wet market in Bishan! These are the kinds of stories we want to see more of.

However, not all SkillsFuture courses have had yielded such results. A resident wrote to me, just today, sharing his difficult mid-career transition. He completed a desktop support engineering course under the SkillsFuture Career Transition programme in 2025 to transition into an entry-level IT role in the hopes of improving his employment prospects. The training provider also said that they would support job placement efforts, but entry-level opportunities in this field are limited, competition is stiff, the market for such roles is niche and many employers prioritise candidates with relevant experience.

Thus, despite acquiring the relevant certifications, he has not received any job offers. Despite these setbacks, my resident continued to persevere, attending career fairs and employment programmes, and he demonstrated openness to take up different roles, even taking on a part-time assignment-based respite caregiver role. He is waiting for confirmation on applications for programme executive roles, school administrative staff roles and even a role with the social service agency. It is a far cry from the IT role he had trained and applied for. Yet, he demonstrates diligence and determination.

He wrote, "I remain committed to securing full-time employment and contributing meaningful to the workforce. I am sharing my situation as I feel that while training support is available, there appear to be gaps in translating training into actual employment opportunities, availability of suitable entry-roles for mid-career individuals, post-event follow-up and job matching support. In addition, it would be very helpful if there could be structured, on-the-job training, practical attachments or industry-based training opportunities to allow individuals, like myself, to gain relevant hands-on experience."

I hope SWDA will consider my resident's requests and I also hope that SWDA, as a single agency, with responsibility for identifying current and emerging skills in close partnership with industries and tripartite partners, can help provide jobseekers with better clarity and concrete pathways that show which courses to take, which work-study options to consider and which jobs are realistically within reach.

Second, this Bill strengthens safeguards and raises standards. When we encourage people to invest their time and savings into training, we carry a responsibility to keep them safe from bad actors. We have seen how some providers try to exploit subsidies or use misleading marketing to pull learners in. I, therefore, welcome the stronger tools enacted in this Bill to act against abusive funding arrangements and false advertising.

Third, this Bill opens the way to a more lifelong and human-centred approach to work. Work is not only about income. It is often an outpouring of a person's purpose and sense of identity. When someone is displaced from work, the impact ripples through the household. Children worry about money, caregivers feel guilt and stress, and the family's collective mental health can suffer. The integrated mandate of this agency gives us a chance to design support that sees the core and the heart of the whole person, and not just the vacancy to be filled.

I am encouraged that the agency will work with schools, IHLs, employers and tripartite partners. I hope it will also work closely with community partners and social service agencies. Many of those who struggle most with training and transitions face multiple stressors at the same time, including caregiving responsibilities, chronic illness, housing challenges and debt. When these issues remain unaddressed, even the best-designed course or job match may not last.

With all of these, Mr Speaker, I have several questions for the Government as we look ahead to execution and the longer term.

First, on near-term execution. How will the Government ensure that the transition from SSG and WSG to the new agency is seamless from the public's perspective?

Second, on long-term plans in a changing economy. We know that the pace of change will accelerate as AI, demographic shifts and climate transition reshape entire sectors. Does the Government see the agency playing a concretely anticipatory role, working with industry bodies to prepare training and transition pathways before major disruptions occur, especially since AI drives structural workforce changes that may lead to substantial layoffs and job obsolescence. How will it move beyond reactive job-matching to help firms proactively redesign career trajectories, ensuring the wider labour force will be meaningfully uplifted, rather than being left to face these shifts alone?

How might the agency evolve to support increasingly salient forms of work, such as gig workers, freelancers and those in informal care roles who may not fit neatly into traditional employer-employee models? And will the agency track and report not just training participation, but also outcomes, like wage progression, job stability and well-being, so that Singaporeans can see whether the system is truly working for all of them together?

Third, on supporting those at greatest risk of being left behind. In this House, I have spoken before about what it feels like to be at the margins and to feel that the system is not set up for you. Many lower-income workers, older workers and caregivers express similar anxieties. They know that there are many schemes, yet they do not know where to start and they worry that they cannot keep up.

In Bishan East-Sin Ming, we have a Career Navigators programme, where volunteers work closely with e2i and journey alongside jobseekers. Can the Government share how the new agency will work with the community to proactively identify and support these groups, perhaps through neighbourhood-based outreach or peer mentors? How will we design flexible training models that respect caregiving responsibilities, health conditions and different learning needs? And can we make more space for a modular learning and micro-credentials that still add up to meaningful progression, so that those who cannot commit to a long qualification do not feel shut out.

Mr Speaker, this Bill is about the kind of Singapore we choose to be in an uncertain world. Do we, as a nation, leave people to fend for themselves in a race that only some can win, or do we commit to walking with them as they learn, work and care?

I believe this new agency is key to a further and necessary shift in our national psyche. Over the last decade, SkillsFuture has successfully changed the mindset of our society toward the necessity of lifelong learning. For the next phase, I hope the new SWDA will lead us toward a deeper transformation.

To return to the analogy of the rock wall that I used at the beginning of my speech, the SWDA is the rope system, anchored firmly by the state, employers and unions together. It ensures that when a worker reaches for a hold and slips, they are not left to fall without support, but are given the safety to regain their footing, to be guided back to the wall and to continue their ascent with renewed confidence and clearer direction.

I hope that as we build this new agency, we hold fast to a simple measure of success: that more Singaporeans, especially those who feel anxious today, can say with confidence that even if they stumble in their climb, they are not alone and they are able to rise again. I support the Bill.

Mr Speaker: Mr Yip Hon Weng.

7.02 pm

Mr Yip Hon Weng (Yio Chu Kang): Mr Speaker, Sir, at my Meet-the-People Session, I regularly meet residents who come to me looking for jobs. Some are fresh jobseekers, anxious about their first step into the workforce. Many are older workers and mid-career PMEs, trying to find their footing again after displacement.

One resident, Mr K, came to see me. He had attended many SkillsFuture courses. He went to e2i for help. He met a job coach, worked on his curriculum vitae, took advice, followed through on what was recommended. But he still could not land a job. When he came back again, it was not because he had not tried. It was because, in his own words, the problem was not effort but his age. And it was the gap between what he had hoped for and what the market was willing to offer.

Mr Speaker, Sir, Mr K's story is not unique. I am sure many Members have similar stories to tell. And this is precisely why this Bill matters. I rise in support of the intention behind the new SWDA to bring skills, careers and workforce support together into a more coherent and coordinated system.

As this is an enabling Bill, Parliament's responsibility is not only to examine the powers that are being created, but to ask a deeper question. What outcomes will these powers guarantee for our people?

My residents, especially older workers, displaced PMEs and fresh graduates do not merely need a larger agency. They need earlier help, clearer pathways, fairer decisions and measurable results. It is in this spirit that I seek clarifications in five areas.

First, Mr Speaker, Sir, on the strategic rationale of the merger. We began with one agency more than a decade ago under the WDA, moved to two with SSG and WSG and now returning to one. So, the fundamental question is not whether integration sounds right. The question is what has fundamentally changed. If SSG and WSG have largely achieved their intended objectives, then what specific coordination gaps or overlaps remain today? What could not be done under two agencies that now requires a single statutory board with a consolidated and expanded mandate under section 5?

This is a question of design clarity. If the problem is fragmentation between agencies, then consolidation is logical. But if the problem lies in execution on the ground, then merging agencies alone may not solve anything.

Section 5 confers a broad mandate, including additional functions assigned by the Minister. At the same time, clause 6 gives the agency wide-ranging operational powers, from funding to partnerships. This reinforces the need for clarity on how such broad discretion will translate into better outcomes for residents.

We must, therefore, be clear. Are we streamlining the system or are we concentrating complexity within a single institution? Because structure is only a means. The real test is whether this design will improve outcomes for residents like Mr K.

Second, Mr Speaker, Sir, on timing. This is about when the system intervenes. For displaced PMEs and older workers, timing determines outcome. Support that comes from redundancy often comes too late.

This Bill gives the agency the power to act. But it does not impose a duty to act early. Clause 5(3) makes clear that these functions do not create an enforceable duty. Section 5(1)(g) allows the collection and analysis of labour market data. But such data has already been collected across agencies. The question is not data collection, but whether data now leads to earlier and more decisive intervention.

So, what triggers early action? Will it be wage decline, sector disruption or repeated job transitions? Will outreach be proactive or still largely reactive? And if decisions are data driven, what resources does a resident have, if the system misclassifies risk?

When we speak of success, how will it be measured? Is it participation in programmes, or is it how quickly someone returns to work, at what age and what wage, and for how long they remain employed? More fundamentally, should we move decisively towards a place-and-train model, where employment is secured upfront and training follows rather than asking residents to train first without a clear job pathway?

To strengthen this pillar, I suggest: first, clear triggers for proactive intervention. Second, public reporting on time to placement and retention outcomes. And third, defined governance and appeal mechanisms for data and AI-driven decisions. Because for residents like Mr K, help that comes too late does not change the outcome.

Third, Mr Speaker, Sir, on service delivery. This is about how residents experience the system. The Bill defines functions and powers, but it does not define service guarantees. Section 5(1)(c) speaks of coordination. But coordination must translate into a real experience. Will residents be case managed end-to-end, or will they still move across multiple touchpoints?

How will MyCareersFuture and MySkillsFuture be streamlined under SWDA to provide a truly integrated, one-stop platform for individuals? If these platforms remain separate, we risk preserving fragmentation in the user journey, even as we merge agencies at the top.

If the intention is seamless service, why is there no explicit "no wrong door" commitment? This matters especially for older workers and residents who require high-touch support. Section 66 allows for codes and guidelines. But these do not have legislative effect. If these codes are non-legislative, how will Parliament know what standards are actually being enforced in practice?

To make the system real for residents, I suggest that we need: first, a formal "no wrong door" protocol. Second, published service standards for response and case continuity. And third, transparency on digital versus assisted access. Because residents, like Mr K, do not see agencies. They experience whether someone stays with them throughout the journey or whether they are passed along.

Fourth, Mr Speaker, Sir, on quality and funding. This is about what we fund and what we measure. Mr K did everything right. He attended courses. He sought help. But the system did not deliver the outcome he needed. That is the gap we must confront. Clause 52 addresses false advertising. But there is a deeper issue. Possible misleading quality. Courses that are technically compliant but may not improve employability. A course that is completed but does not improve employability is not a success. It is a displacement deferred.

Hence, will SWDA track whether training actually leads to jobs? Will providers be assessed based on placement rates, wage outcomes and retention? Will low-performing programmes be removed? What mechanisms will SWDA put in place to ensure that training curricula of its funded courses are tightly aligned with industry demand and not lagging behind it? Will there be stronger accountability for training providers whose programmes do not lead to actual job placements?

We must also avoid a system where providers focus only on easy cases. Those who need the most support must not be left behind. To strengthen this pillar, I suggest first, having outcome-based reporting by programme type; second, disclosure of placement and wage outcomes; and third, funding tied to sustained employment, not just completion. Because for residents, like Mr K, training is not the goal. A job is the goal.

Finally, Mr Speaker, Sir, on implementation. This is about who delivers the system. Sections 69 and 70 protect staff transfers. That ensures continuity at the point of merger. But what happens after? Once integration begins in earnest, what is the plan for restructuring? Will there be duplication? Will roles be restructured? How will officers be redeployed?

We must provide clarity to those who will implement this system. We must also clarify the role of ecosystem partners, especially NTUC and e2i. They are central to outreach and delivery. But the Bill does not define their role in the new structure. Will they be delivery partners, referral partners or advisory partners? Will there be a formal tripartite framework? Will standards be consistent across all partners? And critically, will residents have a single complaints and appeals pathway? Because integration at the top must not lead to fragmentation below.

In conclusion, Mr Speaker, Sir, let me return to Mr K. He did everything we asked of him. But effort did not lead to a desirable outcome. That is the gap this Bill must close. Because we are not just preparing Singaporeans for the jobs of today. We are also preparing them for the jobs of tomorrow in a future shaped by technology and AI.

The Prime Minister reminded us in Budget 2026 and also at May Day that AI will transform the way we work, the way businesses operate and the way jobs are created. Skills will age more quickly, industries will shift faster and workers will have to adapt continuously.

So, the question before us is not just how we help someone find a job. The question is whether we are building a system that helps Singaporeans stay employable and employed over a lifetime.

As Vice Chair of the Health GPC, I often reflect on how we approach healthcare. We do not wait for people to fall sick before we act. We screen early, we intervene upstream and we support individuals over time. We should take the same approach to careers. SWDA should not just be reactive. It should be proactive. It should help Singaporeans monitor their career health, anticipate change and act early.

And if I may summarise the key points I have raised in my speech. First, clarity of purpose in this merger. Second, earlier and more proactive interventions. Third, a truly seamless resident experience. Fourth, accountability for training quality and outcomes. And fifth, clarity in implementation and partnerships.

Ultimately, all of these come down to one test. When a person steps forward, when he invests his time in training, when he does everything right, does that training lead to a job and does that job last? Not enrolment, but employment. Not completion, but continuation. Because without that, the system risks measuring effort, not outcomes. If SWDA can track that, measure it and act on it, then residents, like Mr K, will not have to come back again asking for help. They will move forward. And this system will not just deliver programmes. It will deliver outcomes. Mr Speaker, Sir, I support this Bill.

Mr Speaker: Mr Saktiandi Supaat.

7.14 pm

Mr Saktiandi Supaat (Bishan-Toa Payoh): Mr Speaker, Sir, it is essential that the skills upgrading of our workers is more closely mapped to our economic needs and there are good jobs for our workers. In that regard, I therefore support the Bill to merge and form the SWDA, but I have some clarifications on some of the underlying principles, perceptions and operational issues.

First, merger as a force multiplier. There is an obvious synergy between the educational and training work that is currently spearheaded by SSG, and the workforce design and transformation that is supported by WSG. After all, both agencies were restructured out of the WDA that was set up in 2003 to focus on CET to mitigate against job displacement of Singaporeans. Even after they were housed under different Agencies, SSG and WSG, they collaborate to work together to build a robust and integrated jobs and skills ecosystem.

So, when we look at the functions of the new SWDA under clause 5 of the Bill, what are the new thrusts that go beyond the existing functions in the SkillsFuture Singapore Agency Act 2016 and in the Workforce Singapore Agency Act 2003? It would be helpful for Singaporeans to understand that this is not merely a bureaucratic combination, but a transformational change where one plus one gives you more than two.

Post-merger, how would existing initiatives and programmes be continued and/or enhanced? This is especially with the skills and jobs initiatives and workgroups that have only been rolled out in the past 12 months or so, such as AfA-ACES and the Tripartite Workgroup on Human Capital Capability Development (TWG-HC). May I ask whether the Minister can share how the continuity of these initiatives, programmes and workgroups will or will not be affected by the establishment of SWDA?

More fundamentally, this brings up the question of how we have been measuring the success of our skills and jobs transformation efforts? What metrics are being used? A few years down the road, what objective and subjective indicators can we rely upon to tell us whether the SWDA has been a true force multiplier, or merely an administrative combination of SSG and WSG with no real value add to outcomes?

Second, costs and drawbacks of the merger. There may be some perception that the merger is unnecessary wastage since we had split the WDA to create SSG and WSG in 2016, and now we are bridging it under one umbrella agency again.

From my reading of the Hansard, I do not think there is any inconsistency between the rationale behind creating SSG to create better synergies with MOE and education institutions, and the SWDA's objective of a unified strategy for the training, career and employment services ecosystem. But perhaps the Minister could help to assuage any such concerns.

What are the estimated costs of bringing the SSG and WSG together as one SWDA? I expect that some costs will need to be expended for rebranding, including on materials and collaterals. In addition, has there been any assessment of the costs of the increased size of the organisation, along with any associated externalities? Notwithstanding the vesting provisions at clause 68 of the Bill, I presume there will also be administrative costs in reflecting changes to the bank accounts, property and funds held by the respective agencies.

Third, operational issues. Finally, my last group of clarifications relate to operational issues of the new SWDA. Beyond organisational structure, the effectiveness of the SWDA will ultimately depend on how quickly it can translate industry signals into skills development and training outcomes.

Clause 9 of the Bill provides that the new SWDA will consist of seven to 15 members. What is the role of these members and what kind of knowledge, skills and experience would these members be expected to possess? Would this be a tripartite group in and of itself, or is it expected that the new SWDA will continually engage with and partner NTUC and the Singapore National Employers' Federation (SNEF) in devising and executing its plans? How is the relationship between the new SWDA, NTUC and SNEF expected to be like on a working level?

Could the Minister also elaborate on the intended composition of the SWDA Board and the types of knowledge, skills and experience that these members are expected to bring? Given the fast-changing nature of the global economy and labour market, it would be useful to understand whether there will be strong representation from the private sector, particularly senior HR practitioners and business leaders at the managing director level and above from multinational corporations and leading local enterprises.

Such practitioners are often at the frontline of hiring, skills transformation and workforce planning, and are therefore well-placed to provide timely insights into emerging skills gaps and evolving job roles. Their perspectives could help ensure that SWDA remains closely attuned to real-world industry developments and is able to respond more quickly to shifts in demand. In addition, will there be mechanisms beyond Board representation, such as advisory panels or sector-specific councils, to systematically capture and incorporate these industry insights into policy design and programme implementation?

For public servants that are currently serving under SSG and WSG, may I ask how would their roles be restructured or reorganised after the merger? While clauses 69 and 70 of the Bill seek to transfer every SSG and WSG employee to the new SWDA and present their employment terms, I do not suppose the intention is for every such employee to retain their current portfolios in the new and enhanced SWDA.

The Prime Minister's Budget 2026 speech also announced that the new SWDA will be jointly overseen by the MOM and the MOE, some of the Members before me have already mentioned this. When the proposed WSDA Bill refers to "Minister" without specifying his/her portfolio, for example at clauses 1, 4 and 7, does that refer to the Minister for Manpower or the Minister for Education? It may be helpful to have a simple, graphical representation of the allocation of Ministerial responsibility, so that it is clear to members of the public, or even us Members of Parliament, on who we should be raising specific SWDA-related issues to.

Mr Speaker, Sir, building on the point about the joint oversight by MOM and MOE, I would like to seek clarification on how SWDA will work more closely with our ITEs, polytechnics and universities to ensure that curricula remain aligned with rapidly evolving industry needs.

Today, the pace of change in areas, such as AI, advanced manufacturing and digital services, is accelerating. Skills that are relevant today may become outdated within just a few years. While our institutions have done well to update programmes periodically, there may be scope to move towards a more dynamic and iterative model of curriculum design.

For instance, could the Minister elaborate on whether SWDA will play a more active role in feeding real-time industry insights into curriculum development, so that the course content, modules and skill pathways can be refreshed more frequently and responsively? This would help, importantly, ensure that our students graduate not just with qualifications, but with skills that are immediately relevant and adaptable to the needs of employers and are not redundant in five years.

In this regard, will there be structured mechanisms for closer and more continuous engagement between industry, training providers and MOE, so that we can better anticipate skills demand rather than respond to it after the fact?

Mr Speaker, in conclusion, this move to consolidate our efforts to uplift our training, career and employment services ecosystem holistically is welcome. Amidst rapid technological advancements, such as AI and geopolitical shifts that are getting more uncertain and unpredictable, change is the only constant. We must continue to keep our world-leading and maturing workforce nimble, so that we can capitalise on the opportunities that spring up and capture value and good jobs for Singaporeans today and tomorrow and for our students still in school, in our IHLs, at the moment. Mr Speaker, Sir, notwithstanding the clarifications sought, I support the Bill.

Mr Speaker: Minister of State Desmond Choo.

7.23 pm

The Minister of State for Defence (Mr Desmond Choo): Mr Speaker, Sir, I rise in support of the SWDA Bill.

When the Workforce Development Agency was split in 2016 to form the SSG and WSG, it was the right move for that time. Each agency had a clear mission. SSG focused on kickstarting and building lifelong learning and continuing education among Singaporeans. WSG focused on job matching and employment support.

Both agencies have made real contributions over the past decade. The question before us today is whether our institutions are still suited to the labour market that Singaporeans now face. This Bill is a timely and necessary response to a changed world of work.

In the past, we could treat skills and employment as two separate journeys. You went to school to get skills and then you went to the job market to find work. But today, skills and work are tied together in an ongoing journey.

Based on an NTUC survey, more than three in four workers expect to make career changes in their lifetime. They see a winding path due to change, new responsibilities and the need to be ready for what the future holds – and that is why the merger matters. It recognises that career security is the new social compact. It does not mean workers expect the Government to guarantee every job.

Singaporeans understand that change and disruption are part of modern working life, but they do expect something fair and fundamental. If you work hard, learnt and adapt, they should have a fair chance to progress, to move into new opportunities and to provide for their families with dignity and confidence.

Career security is not the promise of no disruption. It is a promise that workers will not be left alone to navigate disruption.

Back in 2016, I argued that training and job outcomes must stay connected. I still believe in that today. The true test of a policy is not how many people attend the course or how many certificates are handed out. The real test is whether workers can move into better jobs and feel more confident about the future.

Right now, the system can feel a bit fragmented for some workers. They might get career guidance in one office. They go to another place for training advice. They look for job support somewhere else. When you are in the middle of a stressful career change, this fragmented journey can make things appear harder. You are left to bridge the gaps yourself.

The new SWDA seeks to change this by bringing everything under one roof. It will link business transformation, training and employment support into a smoother workstream. We must remember that training, by itself, is not enough if the jobs themselves are not being redesigned. Skills training must match work, how work is actually being organised in the real world. When merging these agencies, we ensure that training is always tied to real industry needs.

Mr Speaker, the anxieties in the workplace are also changing. Many workers are not only worried about losing their jobs, they are worried about falling behind. They are worried that the skills they have today may not be enough for tomorrow. When workers make the effort to upskill but cannot see how that leads to better jobs or real mobility, confidence in the system starts to weaken. And when effort no longer appears to lead to opportunity, the issue is not just economic, it is social as well.

One area that deserves close attention is what some have called the broken rung, something I spoke about during my Budget speech. Many academics and researchers have also spoken up on this matter, and you will find increasing literature on this topic.

For young people, the first foothold in the labour market matters. It shapes confidence, habits, skills and future earnings. It often sets the direction of an entire career, but today the first rung is less secure. Entry-level work is changing. Employers are rethinking junior roles. New technologies, including AI, are changing what firms expect, even from those just entering the workforce. For some young workers, the challenge is no longer simply finding a job. It is finding a start.

If the first rung weakens, it affects progression, wage growth and long-term mobility. The old assumption that one can simply enter, learn on a job and move up steadily can no longer be taken for granted. New entrants need stronger career guidance earlier. They need better information on where demand is growing and training that is more closely tied to real workplace needs. They may also need more support in moving from school to work and from first job to a sustainable career.

This is where a more integrated agency can make a real difference. When the same system can connect career guidance, training advice, market labour signals and employment support, it becomes easier to help younger Singaporeans where they are most likely to fall through the cracks.

Mr Speaker, Sir, no Statutory Board, however well designed, can build career security on its own. This effort requires the full strength of tripartism.

Government can shape policy and provide systems of support. Employers create jobs, redesign work and invest in their people. Unions bring workers' voice, trust and a deep understanding of how change is felt on the ground. Training providers helped turn broad ambition to practical capability. All parts of this ecosystem matter.

We recently announced the Tripartite Jobs Council on May Day. This Council will help workers and the businesses navigate the big changes brought by AI. It will work hand-in-hand with the SWDA to make sure that businesses adopt new technology, that workers are trained and supported to move into new roles.

The Labour Movement stands ready to support this effort in concrete ways. NTUC has a long-standing partnership with Government on business transformation, training and worker support. Through our unions and our work on the ground, we see where anxieties are rising and where support is most needed. We can help workers and employers understand where opportunities lie and navigate the path from uncertainty to action.

The e2i will continue its deep partnership with the new agency. Over the years, WSG has transferred various career jobs and skills centres to e2i, enabling it to serve more jobseekers on the ground. Building on this foundation, e2i can work closely with the new agency to translate national strategies into practical support through direct engagement with workers and businesses on career guidance, job matching and workforce transformation.

This is especially important for younger workers. As the broken rung becomes a more real concern, support should begin earlier. Career guidance should not only start after a young person struggles to find work. It should begin before graduation and continue through the early career years, where expectations are shifting quickly and confidence is still being formed.

Let me share two examples of how this can be done.

First, e2i can and will bring its labour market knowledge, employer network and ground-sensing to partnerships with IHLs. Its recent Memoranda of Understanding with National University of Singapore and Singapore Institute of Technology showed how this can strengthen students' career readiness, connect them to broader range of opportunities and help them understand the skills needed in a changing workplace.

Second, NTUC can scale up our AI career coach. This tool has already seen over 9,000 sign-ups, providing 24/7 help to young people as they take first steps into the workforce.

Mr Speaker, NTUC will also continue to support workers making career transitions. For many mid-career workers, the fear is not only just change itself but the cost of change. A transition may mean temporary income loss, uncertainty for the family and real doubt about whether a new path will work out. Workers need support – the lower the friction of transition, it gives them greater confidence to make a move when change becomes necessary.

With the merger of this agency, we should consider a few things.

First, expand place-and-train programmes. This is where a worker is matched to a job before they start training. It gives them certainty of a pay cheque and a clear path forward, reducing the stress in their lives. NTUC Learning Hub can further support this new social compact by helping workers and employers translate transformation into capability. We know training only works if it is tied to a real job. Through our Company Training Committees, we help companies, especially small businesses, figure out how to redesign their work and help their workers to improve.

NTUC Learning Hub can play a vital role here. They do not just offer random courses. They build skills pathways that industries actually value. For example, the Tech Talent Academy works with tech firms like AWS, Microsoft and Goggle to train and place workers into tech jobs. Since 2024, the Tech Talent Academy has trained over 53,000 workers. About 4,000 of these were people switching careers through the SkillsFuture Career Transition Programme. More than half of them have already found jobs in a softening job market. This shows that when we link training directly to employment, better things can happen.

Mr Speaker, the success of this Bill will be judged by whether workers experience a system that is more coherent or responsive and more relevant to their daily lives. If this new agency can help Singapore move closer to that goal, it will build the social compact for a new era of work. The Government has an important role, but it cannot do this alone. NTUC will continue with the new SWDA to strength career security for workers at every stage of their life. Career security is the new social compact. This Bill is an important step towards building that compact for workers for today and tomorrow. Mr Speaker, I support the Bill.

Mr Speaker: Minister Dr Tan See Leng.

7.33 pm

Dr Tan See Leng: Mr Speaker, I thank Members for their support as well as their questions and suggestions on the SWDA Bill. There are many points raised. I will attempt to address all of them holistically. I will group the issues raised thematically and of course, reply to the questions as best as possible.

I have decided to group it into eight broad pillars. First, why this merger, why now. Second, raising the quality as well as the forms of training. Three, connecting training to matching them to good jobs. Four, catering to diverse and ever-changing needs. Five, become even more proactive and to provide anticipatory support. Six, what are the outcome measures of success. Seven, the governance of the new merged entity. And of course, eight, last but not least, on transition and continuity.

So, why this merger and why now?

First, I would like to address some fundamental questions raised over the purpose of this merger. In particular, Mr Gerald Giam characterised the merger as a reversal of the position from 2016. I disagree with this characterisation. It is more important to ask if the restructuring in 2016 was the right call then and whether the merger, moving forward is the right call now and for the future. The answer to both questions is yes. Let me explain.

The restructuring in 2016 allowed SSG and WSG to develop specialised capabilities in adult training and employment facilitation respectively. The House then supported the Skills Future Singapore Agency Bill in 2016. Mr Giam's former colleague, Mr Leon Pereira, supported the aim to bring about a far-reaching change in our adult education and training landscape by establishing an agency that is solely focused on adult education in ways that are intimately linked to economic goals. This is in the Hansard.

SSG has achieved that aim. Through SSG's nexus with MOE, the IHLs have become the key pillars of CET delivery today. Meanwhile, WSG expanded public employment services and introduced new programmes to address mismatches. Both agencies have substantially achieved the objectives of the restructuring. Earlier on, when I gave the speech, I elaborated extensively on the achievements of SSG and WSG.

As for why the merger is the right decision today, let me quote John Maynard Keynes, which is the father of macroeconomics, "When the facts change, I change my mind."

Members of the House, with the rapid advances in AI, with technology disruptions happening at a rapid pace and mounting geopolitical disruptions, our operating reality has changed significantly – and so must we.

The next bound of our workforce strategy requires an end-to-end system that connects skills to jobs more quickly and more accurately than before. It requires a more integrated structure so that we can be more agile and nimble in predicting, in pre-empting and preparing for new opportunities and disruptions. It also requires a greater variety, a greater volume of services to meet the ever more complex and diverse needs of workers and their employers.

So, hence, in addition to delivering better services and programmes, SWDA has an expanded mandate to develop the broader career employment and training ecosystem in Singapore, supporting innovative solutions and improving access to quality services. This is what will make SWDA more than the sum of its parts.

To address Mr Saktiandi Supaat's question, this is a key function in the SWDA Bill which goes beyond those in the SSG and the WSG Act.

At the same time, we must not lose the specialised capabilities that we have built over the past 10 years. Mr Shawn Loh rightly highlighted the importance of preserving the strong relationship between IHLs and the SkillsFuture movement. And Assoc Prof Terence Ho asked how we will ensure that IHLs will continue to develop as institutions of lifelong learning. Through MOE's joint oversight of SWDA, we will continue to deepen this relationship, strengthen complementarity between IHLs and private training providers and improve coordination between CET and pre-employment training.

To address Ms He Ting Ru's question on how SWDA might manage the reporting relationship to two Ministries, MOM will be the parent Ministry of SWDA, but the joint oversight arrangement with MOE, that means between myself and Minister Desmond Lee, will bring the IHLs into closer alignment with our workforce agenda, ensuring that skills development is pursued in a coherent way. Members of the House, this is not a two-headed monster. This is a two-horse chariot, pulling in the same direction, charging ahead. [Applause.]

Mr Saktiandi and Mr Giam asked about the costs. The 2016 restructuring of WDA into two separate Statutory Boards did not require additional funding from the Ministry of Finance. Similarly, the merger also not require additional budget allocation. There will be some costs incurred for branding, marketing and systems integration. These costs would have been budgeted for any regular refreshes, even if there was no merger. These costs will be managed within the existing budgets of SSG and WSG, and their reserves.

On the second point, raising the quality and the focus of training, Ms Gho Sze Kee asked about the curation of SkillsFuture courses. She is right that not everything in the SkillsFuture catalogue has been directed towards our workforce development goals. But SkillsFuture is much more than just training for industry.

SkillsFuture is a national movement to promote a culture of lifelong learning. Cultivating the habit of lifelong learning matters. Remember I kept emphasising earlier on about getting everyone to have that mindset change. So, how do we initiate them, how do we start them into that habit, that matters.

In response to Assoc Prof Terence Ho's question, lifelong learning that is not targeted at employment will still come under SWDA's purview. SWDA will work with agencies, such as the People's Association on the curation of such programmes. And we encourage all Singaporeans to learn not just for their current job, or the next job, but also in their areas of interest. Not all training leads to immediate employment and wage gains. And so, the SkillsFuture catalogue includes some interest-based courses.

However, when it comes to funding, we do make a distinction, a very clear distinction between industry-oriented and interest-based courses.

While the base tier of SkillsFuture Credit is applicable to a wide range of courses, including those for personal interests, Government funding for course fees is only applicable for courses that offer skills relevant to that specific industry, which will support the workforce's upskilling needs. The additional SkillsFuture Credit for mid-careerists is further scoped to courses that meet more stringent criteria on employability outcomes and industry relevance.

On a third group, connecting and matching training to good jobs, it is essential that SWDA's good work is closely linked to industry and of top tier quality.

I would like to address two misconceptions from Mr Kenneth Tiong's speech.

First, unlike what Mr Tiong shared earlier on, there are significant guardrails to ensuring that SkillsFuture courses are top quality, with industry playing a big role in ensuring the relevance of training.

Our trade associations and chambers, and professional bodies, they come together to help curate and signpost courses and some employers serve as SkillsFuture Queen Bees to provide training for other companies, including SMEs in their respective sectors. As SWDA, we will work with industry to play an even bigger role, which also brings me to my second point.

I think Mr Tiong, perhaps, may not have fully understood. He has over-simplified SkillsFuture. It is not just an individual credit scheme. SkillsFuture sits alongside the SkillsFuture Enterprise Credit, which employers can use to send their workers for training. These employers and individuals need to co-pay for training programmes, whether through their credits or out-of-pocket, and they must also invest their time and effort. This creates skin in the game. Companies and workers must choose the best courses worth their while and training providers must regularly up the game to compete.

The Government, of course, plays a role in regulating the provider, the course and adult educator as well. And as pointed out by Ms Jessica Tan, our success depends on the ecosystem: on the individuals, employers and other stakeholders and partners playing a big role.

This ecosystem is, therefore, central to the SkillsFuture movement and will continue to be so under SWDA. As Mr Darryl David rightly pointed out, SkillsFuture is fundamentally an instrument of economic mobility and employability.

This now brings me to the core of SWDA's mandate and that is to support Singaporeans at every stage of their careers through promoting lifelong learning, strengthening their career health and enhancing access to good jobs.

Dr Wan Rizal identified two distinct gaps that SWDA must close. The first-job gap for fresh graduates and the career transition gap for mid-careerists. Mr Darryl David highlighted that students often make decisions about courses and career pathways without a clear understanding of labour market realities. Mr Patrick Tay, Mr Desmond Choo and Ms Jessica Tan also raised concerns on how SWDA will support entry-level hiring amidst business restructuring and AI-driven change.

On supporting fresh graduates to get their first jobs, I agree with Dr Wan Rizal and Mr Darryl David that we cannot wait until students graduate before we intervene.

SWDA will work with IHLs and MOE to bring industry exposure upstream so that our students can have a clearer picture of the labour market well before they graduate. I am not confident that we can go all the way to the secondary school as suggested by a Member here, but we certainly will go upstream to bring the industry exposure to our undergraduates.

This means more systematic pathways into industry attachments and clearer signals on skills and roles in demand. At the same time, we will review measures to better support graduates who face difficulties in securing employment.

To support mid-careerists to chart their careers amidst a fast-evolving world, SWDA will empower them to take charge and strengthen their career health. We will make good quality career guidance services more accessible to the broad middle of workers and equip them with data-driven insights on jobs and skills so that they can undertake the right training that connects them to the opportunities that they are seeking.

We will look at tying course funding more closely to demand signals so that training translates into better career prospects.

The calls from Mr Darryl David, Mr Yip Hon Weng, Mr Shawn Loh and Assoc Prof Terence Ho to tighten the nexus between training grants and employment outcomes are directionally aligned with our plans. Dr Neo Kok Beng's suggestion for SWDA to partner professional institutions to align training to professional accreditations will also help to ensure that the skills acquired are recognised by the industry and can pave the way for career progression.

We are also supporting Singaporeans to acquire the skills and the perspectives needed for a globalised economy. The OMIP that Mr Tiong talked about allows companies to send to Singaporeans on overseas postings to build first-hand knowledge of international markets and bring these insights back home. We agree that such schemes can be made accessible to benefit even more Singaporeans and we had announced at the Committee of Supply this year that we will be expanding OMIP to young professionals even earlier in their careers.

Supporting our workers to acquire skills, experience and career agility is only part of the equation. To maximise their potential, workers must also be able to signal their skills and experience to employers, be matched to jobs that make use of these skills and experience and to be rewarded fairly.

To this end, SWDA will also work to reduce information asymmetries in the labour market to facilitate more efficient job matching.

MyCareersFuture.gov.sg will continue to be our national jobs bank, where good jobs are visible, accessible and intelligently matched to jobseekers. To strengthen the pipeline of quality job listings, MOM, SWDA and sector agencies will work together to encourage more companies to list vacancies on the portal.

Today, there are already over 60,000 job postings published on MyCareersFuture. We aspire to reach 100,000 job postings in 12 months from SWDA's establishment. We have forged partnerships with five online job portals. Singaporeans can use verified employment history and training data in their Careers and Skills Passport to apply for jobs on these job portals. The results are promising. Applicants with verified credentials are 1.5 times more likely to be shortlisted by hirers.

In line with SWDA's expanded mandate, we will build ecosystem enablers, such as data sharing mechanisms and accreditation frameworks, to facilitate faster and better job matches.

The fourth pillar: catering to diverse and ever-changing needs.

Several Members have asked how SWDA will serve the diverse needs of workers and employers. Ms Yeo Wan Ling, Dr Hamid Razak, Ms Elysa Chen, Mr Patrick Tay, Mr Melvin Yong, Ms He Ting Ru and Ms Jessica Tan have asked about worker segments, such as caregivers, seniors, persons with disabilities, ex-offenders and those who have experienced health setbacks.

We will partner community organisations, like SG Enable, Yellow Ribbon Singapore and Community Development Councils, to reach the more vulnerable segments. As Mr Melvin Yong suggested, we are also studying ways to provide stronger support for more flexible work models, such as fractional work, that may better cater to their needs.

Mr Yip asked specifically about the role of NTUC and e2i. e2i operates 27 out of 31 touchpoints island-wide for career matching and advisory. NTUC is spearheading the Company Training Committee initiative, which involves $300 million funding to drive enterprise and workforce transformation.

Echoing Mr Desmond Choo, the Labour Movement will continue to be a strategic partner of SWDA in translating national strategies to practical support by providing high-touch support to different worker segments through employment facilitation, training and workforce transformation.

For employers, they also have diverse needs depending on their industry size, sector and business development plans. Mr Mark Lee asked whether support will be differentiated for SMEs and large enterprises and whether SWDA will retain sector-specific expertise. SWDA will tailor its strategies to better suit the different profiles of the companies that it serves.

In line with suggestions from Ms Yeo Wan Ling, Ms Eileen Chong, Mr Melvin Yong, Mr Shawn Loh, Mr Mark Lee and Assoc Prof Terence Ho, SWDA will also explore ways to step up support for job redesign and on-job-training so that training is customised to different workplaces and different business models, helping our workers to take on higher-value-added jobs.

Ms Yeo Wan Ling called for SWDA to support more companies in job redesign and workforce transformation, just like FairPrice Store of Tomorrow at Punggol. This will indeed be a priority for SWDA. And then to address Ms Chong's question about how we will support skill-based HR practices, we have recently introduced tools, like TalentTrack and TalentTrack+, which help employers assess the skills readiness of their workforce and identify suitable training interventions.

Mr Gerald Giam also asked how will SWDA coordinate with the economic agencies under the MTI. Today, WSG and SSG already work closely with MTI and sector agencies through established inter-agency coordination platforms. With the merger, we will build on these mechanisms to deepen this coordination even further, tightening the nexus between jobs and skills and between enterprise and workforce transformation.

Mr Giam, perhaps it is late in the evening and he may have forgotten, I personally have a stake in this because I am also a Minister in MTI. So, I wear two hats. Perhaps I am the political officeholder that he is talking about striding two Ministries because I am also the current Manpower Minister. So, the Member can be assured on this point.

Mr Shawn Loh, Mr Mark Lee, Ms Elysa Chen and Ms Jessica Tan asked whether and how SWDA will work with the trade chambers and associations, industry bodies and sectoral partners. Let me reassure them, reassure all Members, that they will be key partners of SWDA in supporting employers and they will play three important roles. It will not be limited to these three roles, but they will play three very important roles.

First, as advocates for the manpower needs of their respective sectors. TACs and industry bodies will help SWDA to sharpen its workforce development programmes. Against the backdrop of recent global developments, such as trade tariffs and the Middle East oil crisis, the SNEF and the Singapore Business Federation have provided timely insights on hiring sentiments and business outlook through dipstick business polls. This helped to inform the Government's policy responses.

Second, they will serve as key programme partners that will increase the breadth and depth of SWDA's coverage. The Singapore Business Federation and SNEF, for example, have already been appointed as anchor programme partners for the Enterprise Workforce Transformation Package. This is our response to Assoc Prof Terence Ho's question about how SWDA will scale impact across the large number of SMEs in different industries.

The third point, they will serve as multipliers, amplifying outreach to employers and driving mindset change on workforce transformation. SNEF has been co-leading tripartite efforts, such as the Tripartite Workgroup on Senior Employment and the Tripartite Workgroup on Human Capital Capability Development, and can support efforts to engender mindset shifts towards the hiring of senior workers and HR practices.

Members may be wondering how SWDA's approach to working with partners will be different from before. There will be two key shifts.

First, what we partner on. Today, most partnerships are focused on training. WSG has also partnered on job matching, career guidance and job redesign but these partnerships have been more targeted and scoped. With SWDA, we will expand and deepen these partnerships to spur new innovations, raise the quality of career and employment services and training. Our initial efforts have begun through pilots under the AfA-ACES and we will continue to build on these.

Second, who do we partner with? SSG works with about 500 training providers, while WSG has only a handful of appointed partners for career matching and guidance. So, with this merger, SWDA will broaden this network beyond training providers to include more recruitment agencies, online job portals and other ecosystem players to diversify services. The goal is for workers and employers to have more options and better support, even as we safeguard and uplift the quality of service provision.

Moving to the fifth group, which is more proactive and more anticipatory support. In a more volatile global environment, the needs of worker and employer segments evolve very rapidly. Ms Elysa Chen, Ms Jessica Tan and Mr Mark Lee asked how SWDA would play a more proactive and anticipatory role, to prepare workers and businesses ahead of disruptions.

Data will be the critical enabler – SWDA will tap on various data sources, including MOM's rich labour market data, demand signals from job postings as well as training take-up. We can splice and fuse the data in new ways to triangulate and distil fresh jobs as well as provide skills insights. These insights can then be applied to personalise services and deliver more targeted support proactively.

We seek to leverage these insights to help more individuals enter into good jobs, build careers with better prospects and extend their career trajectories. As I explained earlier, SWDA will also work with the broader career and employment services and training ecosystem to create more value out of shared data, through analysis or building of value-added services.

Mr Saktiandi Supaat asked about the relationship between SWDA, NTUC and SNEF, and if SWDA will engage them in devising and executing its plans. Ms Yeo Wan Ling called on SWDA to establish regular contact with stakeholders to remain plugged in with ground realities.

NTUC and SNEF and their networks – they have and they are formidable resources – and SWDA will leverage with their resources, their network, to intervene more decisively ahead of upcoming disruptions or downturns. This is also why we recently announced, just last week, on Friday, the set-up of a Tripartite Jobs Council, co-chaired by NTUC, SNEF and MOM to bring our collective capabilities to bear on the challenges and the opportunities brought by AI. Many Members today also spoke about AI.

Ms Yeo Wan Ling spoke about the importance of treating workers as co-creators for AI adoption to ensure better outcomes. Ms Eileen Chong spoke about making job redesign a priority when companies integrate AI into their workflows. Later this evening, depending on what time we end or tomorrow, this House will discuss how we can work together in an era where AI transformation is increasingly pervasive. And I will speak about the importance of concurrent enterprise and workforce transformation in making AI adoption more human-centric.

Moving on to the sixth point, which is on what measurements of success do we look at. Several Members indeed asked us, how would we measure SWDA's success? For individuals, our ultimate goal is to help Singaporeans enter into good jobs and progress in their careers. We will measure SWDA's effectiveness in doing so through indicators, such as time to placement and wage growth, in addition to training and placement numbers.

We already track these outcome indicators today to measure the effectiveness of our interventions. For example, about nine in 10 Career Conversion Programme participants remain employed 24 months after embarking on the programme, and about six in 10 of those who participated in these Career Conversion Programmes earn more than their last drawn salaries.

For employers, we will look at outcomes on adoption of progressive practices in areas, such as job redesign, on-job-training and skills-first hiring. As a first step, we have introduced the Singapore Opportunity Index to provide transparency to job seekers on employers who promote opportunity and deliver strong career outcomes for their workers.

So, to Ms Chong's point, we are tracking such indicators and we will continue to do so. We will continue to tweak and refine and up the ante.

At the economy level, SWDA will contribute to a more inclusive labour market with high resident labour force participation and sustained wage growth. Median wages have grown over the last decade and we will do our best to extend that growth trajectory.

While not so easily measured, we also want to engender a culture of lifelong learning and career health to take root in the DNA of the Singapore workforce.

On my last two points, just bear with me. The seventh point on governance. On the SWDA Board, Mr Saktiandi asked about its composition and the knowledge it will bring. Mr Sanjeev Tiwari asked whether there will be worker representation. The Board will draw from diverse backgrounds – public sector representatives, senior business leaders from multinational corporations and local enterprises across different sectors and key partners, such as NTUC, SNEF and the trade associations and chambers.

Beyond the Board, we also plan to engage international experts, so that our labour market programmes are informed by global trends and by effective interventions elsewhere. The composition of the Board will be announced ahead of SWDA's establishment.

Moving on to the last group – transition and continuity. Mr Mark Lee, Ms Elysa Chen, Ms Jessica Tan and Mr Saktiandi Supaat have asked about the impact of the transition on existing schemes, applications and commitments. I would like assure Members that SSG's and WSG's operations will be fully undertaken by SWDA from Day One. We will ensure uninterrupted service delivery and the existing grant and employment assistance commitments will be honoured.

To the concerns raised by Mr Mark Lee, Mr Shawn Loh and Ms Yeo Wan Ling about potential overlaps, over time, we will work to rationalise programmes and streamline touchpoints to simplify the user journey.

Specific to Mr Yip Hon Weng's and Assoc Prof Terence Ho's questions on whether MyCareersFuture and MySkillsFuture will be streamlined, we will holistically review the user journey across digital touchpoints to build a more seamless user experience with better signposting to guide users to the appropriate digital services.

Mr Saktiandi and Mr Yip also asked about how the roles of SSG and WSG employees will change, while Ms Elysa Chen asked how front-line officers will be equipped to adopt a holistic instead of scheme-by-scheme mindset. We will organise SWDA by stakeholder segments so that those at the frontline can provide more holistic support across jobs and skills for their clients.

As SWDA builds a more integrated operating model, roles and structures will evolve. We have identified suitable roles for all officers and we are committed to managing this with care. We will redeploy officers where their experience is most valuable and we will develop those who need new skills to take on new roles.

Our people have been the backbone of SSG's and WSG's achievements. SWDA's success will depend on all of them and on bringing them alongside with us. Mr Speaker, may I say a few words in Mandarin?

Mr Speaker: Dr Tan, you have about four minutes left. Just to let you know. If you need more than that, the Deputy Leader may want to move an exemption.

Dr Tan See Leng: I think I will need about 10 minutes.

8.09 pm

Mr Speaker: In that case, I will just ask Deputy Leader to so move.

Debate resumed.

Mr Speaker: Dr Tan See Leng, you may resume.

8.10 pm

Dr Tan See Leng: Thank you, Mr Speaker. In Chinese, please.

(In Mandarin): Accelerating technological development and the constantly changing international economic environment are making our labour market increasingly complex.

Skills and career development are like rowing against the current – if you do not advance, you will fall behind.

If Singaporeans do not proactively upgrade their skills and plan their careers early, they will inevitably find themselves struggling to keep pace in the labour market and may even miss out on valuable opportunities. If businesses do not keep up with the times and continually innovate, they will inevitably fall behind in market competition.

Today, Lianhe Zaobao reported that five polytechnics presented the SkillsFuture Lifelong Learning Awards to a total of 15 recipients. This included two individuals aged over 50 among them – Mr Wang Boyu Peter and Ms Serene Soh Sze-Mei. When interviewed, Ms Soh said something that captured the essence of it all: "Age is not an issue. As long as you are willing to take that first step, you can still embark on a new career."

Mr Wang and Ms Soh are role models for lifelong learning. We can learn from their proactive and determined spirit of self-improvement, as we adapt to the rapidly changing demands of the labour market.

The merger of WSG and SSG will combine the strengths of both agencies, providing Singaporeans and employers with more comprehensive and effective support.

The establishment of SWDA will be an important milestone in our nation's human capital development. It will serve as the engine for career health and lifelong learning. Whether you are just entering the workforce, looking to switch careers or hoping to take your career to the next level, we will journey with you.

We hope to work together with every Singaporean to build a sturdy "career-ship" – so that at every stage of your career journey, you can steer its direction with greater confidence and find your own development path amidst changes.

(In English): The formation of SWDA is more than a change in the machinery of our Government. It is a statement of intent – that Singapore will never leave its workers alone in navigating an increasingly complex labour market. That we will build systems worthy of the trust Singaporeans place in them. That we will measure ourselves not by the number of courses run or amount of grants disbursed, but by whether people can find good jobs, grow in their careers and face the future with confidence.

We are doing this at a moment of uncertainty. AI and technology are reshaping industries faster than we can predict. The global economic headwinds are real. The past certainties about career paths and job security are giving way to something significantly more fluid and they are generating more anxiety, more apprehensions for many of us.

But if you look at our history, Singapore has never thrived by waiting for the storm to pass. We thrive by building better ships. The SWDA is one such ship – built to carry our workers and our economy through whatever comes next. I look forward, I invite all of you to come on board and let us sail together. Mr Speaker, with that, I seek to move. [Applause.]

Mr Speaker: After more than five hours and 22 speeches, any clarifications for the Minister? Looks like — oh, sorry, Mr Kenneth Tiong.

8.15 pm

Mr Kenneth Tiong Boon Kiat: Thank you, Speaker, and I thank the Minister.

First of all, the Minister says that MyCareersFuture has 60,000 postings. It aspires to 100,000. There is a widespread perception that job postings on MyCareersFuture is a compliance exercise rather than reflects genuine hiring channels. So, how would the Minister ensure that more of these MyCareersFuture's postings are genuine vacancies?

Second question, the Minister has not addressed my point on sectoral bargaining. Let me put the question more directly. The economic skill formation literature is quite clear that firms tend to under-invest in deep skills training when they face poaching risks – they lose the worker, the day after they have spent a lot of time training, putting them through expensive training.

Wage compression through sectoral bargaining is the established solution. NTUC currently bargains at the enterprise level. So, is it the Government's position that NTUC should not bargain at the sectoral level or that sectoral bargaining is unnecessary? Thank you.

Dr Tan See Leng: I do not have the exact statistics in terms of what the Member was talking about. And I would ask him to also point me perhaps to the statistics that say that all the advertisements in MyCareersFuture are just a paper exercise. If he can highlight any specific company or instance of companies posting on this particular portal as a paper exercise, we will not hesitate to investigate the company. But rather than make a blank statement, come up with the specifics.

With regard to poaching risks, I want to also share a different perspective. Companies that invest in the training of their workers, whether they work through the NTUC Company Training Committees or they work through our job redesign package, work through WSG's Career Conversion Programmes, have seen better retention for their employees. In fact, many of the companies that engage in this type of training tend to attract more talent into their companies against companies who do not.

I have been in private sector all my life. A certain amount of poaching exists, even amongst doctors, medical professionals. They move from groups to groups, but that does not mean that because of that, the entire industry is, therefore, at risk of being undermined or competed away. Perhaps, I can share more of these insights separately. Perhaps, inviting Mr Tiong to file a separate Parliamentary Question at another Sitting, given the fact that we have just finished five hours of this debate.

Mr Speaker: Mr Gerald Giam.

Mr Gerald Giam Yean Song: Sir, can the Minister elaborate a bit more about how SWDA will enhance the job search assistance programme? Specifically, will career counsellors move beyond basic resume editing and portal referrals to leverage real time vacancy data for proactive matching and advocate for candidates?

Dr Tan See Leng: Today, SWDA will leverage on MOM's labour data. The different engines that we have, the different portals that we have within the umbrella of the Government, provide significant opportunities for AI-powered recommendations. First and foremost, on the jobs and skills that is needed and this will help users to better plan for the upskilling and career needs.

NTUC has its own AI career coach, which, just now, one of the labour Members of Parliament shared. On top of that, the Career and Skills Passports with the skills that have been recorded can be more precisely mapped to the different sectoral skills framework to allow for a more differentiated, a more precise matching. A lot of that enhancement of that data coming together will allow us to, therefore, be able to provide a shorter time to matching, and at the same time a more precise matching and more targeted towards skills-based hiring, compared to what it is currently, and we will continue to measure that and provide regular updates.

Mr Speaker: Ms Eileen Chong.

Ms Eileen Chong Pei Shan: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I thank the Minister for his clarification regarding measurement. I am actually really heartened to hear that that MOM is actively tracking the outcomes for individuals who undergo the career conversion programmes, but I also would like to point out that the number of individuals covered by the career conversion programmes are only a small subset of Singaporeans who do undergo many other kinds of career-related training under the SkillsFuture scheme.

So, I would like to ask if the Minister will also like to confirm then that the new agency will indeed also be extending the tracking of these outcomes and whether it is working for these other Singaporeans who are undergoing training, so that Singaporeans can have a clearer picture of what works, what works well, what is not working? And I hope the Minister can agree that, by collecting and publicising data like that, that it will only help to further reinforce the importance of lifelong learning and upskilling amongst Singaporeans once they see the numbers for themselves.

Dr Tan See Leng: I have provided just now in my round-up speech about the impact of the career conversion programmes, which is organised by WSG, and I did not add NTUC Company Training Committees' success rates as well. I do not have it with me. The Secretary-General will be able to provide that. But suffice to say, to further add on to your other colleague, Mr Giam's earlier point, the SWDA's integrated intelligence function will provide forward-looking signals on what roles and what skillsets are in demand, so then this will allow students and even their families in the IHLs to make more informed decisions.

SWDA will also make the jobs and the skills intelligence accessible through its digital platform, through the multiple career advisory touchpoints. And guidance is available at the point of decision making, not only after they have entered a particular job itself. So, with that, I believe that that matching should be even more pervasive, and it will reach out to a wider segment of the population.

On top of that, we are not just focusing on the workforce. We are also focusing on the employers. I have also announced at Budget this year, we are enhancing the Enterprise Workforce Transformation Package and the grants will tie the companies to specific deliverables with regard to job redesign. The details will be further shared once SWDA comes into existence in July. I hope that gives the Member that reassurance.

Mr Speaker: Mr Giam.

Mr Gerald Giam Yean Song: I thank the Minister for responding to my question just now. I am glad to hear that there will be more precise matching with the help of SWDA's the integrated intelligence function. But can I ask if this function will be provided to all jobseekers who approach SWDA or its agencies, like e2i, to seek for job assistance? Because it would not be helpful if only a small proportion of jobseekers get to benefit from it, while the rest are just provided with the resume touch-ups or referrals to portals.

Dr Tan See Leng: Core to the success of this entire exercise requires mindset change – and I did make that a very clear point when I first started my speech.

We have, over the past few years, rolled out many initiatives, including Career Health SG. The case we exhort, we encourage all of our Singapore residents to do is to really take an interest in their own career health, going into their own Career Health to update their own training and look at what are the adjacencies in terms of the skills training that will be required to keep up with the latest development in the industry and economic development.

When they continue to keep up, our portal will also be able to push courses to them, because we would have triangulated from trade associations and chambers, from the employers, from industry as to how the industry is moving, in what directions they are moving. Regardless of what we do, some sectors will face a sunset phase. This happens in all businesses. And for them, this would then allow them to decide whether they want to upgrade themselves in a different industry, allow them to pivot across. As long as they go on that Career Health, going on to CareersFinder, SWDA will work with them every step of the way.

8.27 pm

Mr Speaker: Alright, I believe all the clarifications have been addressed.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time and committed to a Committee of the whole House.

The House immediately resolved itself into a Committee on the Bill. – [Dr Tan See Leng].

Bill considered in Committee; reported without amendment; read a Third time and passed.