Facilitate Renewal of Foreign Manpower for Construction Sector Post-COVID-19

34 Miss Cheryl Chan Wei Ling asked the Minister for Manpower in view of COVID-19's impact on the construction sector, whether the man-year entitlement period can be shortened to two years or less for workers currently in Singapore so as to facilitate the renewal of workers when companies are unable to bring in new workers to continue their trade.

Mrs Josephine Teo: In the Construction and Process sectors, we encourage firms that wish to hire Work Permit holders from non-traditional source countries and China to do so up to their Man-Year Entitlements (MYE), so as to maintain manpower-lean operations. However, for firms that wish to hire additional workers beyond their MYE allocations, such workers should be experienced. This is why we require foreign workers to have at least three years of construction experience to qualify for MYE-waiver.

Nevertheless, we are cognisant of the impact of COVID-19 on the Construction sector, and are prepared to consider requests to renew the work passes of Work Permit holders with less than three years of construction experience under the MYE-waiver, on a case-by-case basis.