Companies Investigated for Splitting Local Qualifying Salary Payments for More Foreign Worker Quotas

75 Ms Yeo Wan Ling asked the Minister for Manpower how many companies in the past five years have been investigated for splitting Local Qualifying Salary payments over two related companies to enjoy more foreign worker quotas.

Dr Tan See Leng: Companies are not allowed to split the salaries of its local employees across different business entities for the purpose of obtaining foreign worker quota for each business entity. Those who do so will be investigated for breaching the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act as a form of inflating their foreign worker entitlement.

Between 2018 and 2022, the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) investigated about 640 employers for inflating their foreign worker entitlement. Of these, only a small proportion involved employers splitting the salaries of their locals across multiple business entities. MOM does not specifically track whether these business entities are related as it is immaterial to the enforcement outcomes.

Of the 640 employers investigated, enforcement actions were eventually taken against about 15% of them. No enforcement action was taken against the remaining employers as investigations showed that they did not hire any foreign workers using the additional quota gained, there were administrative lapses by the companies or due to insufficient evidence.