Nobody got time to sit through the sibei boring and lor sor Parliament speeches, because we are all very busy people and most importantly, TIME IS MONEY.
But hor, this time, Senior Minister of State for Health Koh Poh Koon, who is also the Deputy Secretary-General of the National Trade Union Congress (NTUC) raised some points during his Budget debate speech and they are so important until it might affect people you know positively – maybe even yourself – because it sounds like good news sia!
Just that his speech is a bit long, like almost 30 minutes wor. Who got time for it right? So, we decided to just pick out the important parts and just do a Singlish version for him.
1) Singaporean workers, chill ok? No need scared because you are being looked after
Especially the low-wage workers, middle-aged professionals, managers and executives (PMEs) and senior workers because NTUC got your back, said Koh Poh Koon.
2) Mai kan jiong, got pandemic or not, Singaporeans’ jobs will be protected one
Through the strengthening of the Singaporean Core, manpower policies because now this COVID-19 brought about a new phenomenon like Work-From-Anywhere and Work-From-Home means there will be more competition coming from everywhere.
Koh Poh Koon also said that NTUC will also advocate for better choices, potential and protection for women in the workplace.
3) Can faster uplift the wages of lower-wage workers or not?
The best way to help the low-wage workers is to increase their wages, tio bo? So, Koh Poh Koon gave a few suggestions on how this can be done in his budget debate speech.
First, he said that these low-wage workers should be helped by narrowing their wage difference between the 20th percentile and the median income or 50th percentile of wage earners.
Then, Koh Poh Koon also suggested that the Workfare Income Supplement (WIS) be enhanced so that these low wage workers can be uplifted immediately – tolong lah, mai tu liao. He also want to push and stress the Gahmen to faster expand the sectoral PWM faster to cover more sectors to benefit more workers.
Finally, he also asked if the Gahmen can also consider implementing ‘vocational’ PWM to cover the rest of the lower-wage workers who are in job roles that are distributed across multiple sectors a not mah? Because hor, doing so means can cover more workers like the clerks lah, and the logistics drivers lah etc. They can also benefit from the PWM and then uplift their wages mah – their skills and productivity also can increase.
Steady right? Help you summarise the almost 30 minutes long speech into just 3 points.
But in any case, if you got a lot of time and feel like you want to listen to the proper English version of his speech, you can click here.
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