I was hit by a Tin Pei Ling moment after reading this – I don’t know what to say. (I am also glad I wasn’t eating when I read this, because I would have choked.)

It wasn’t because I can’t think of what to say, but because there’s a few things going through my mind then and I needed to organise them. However, my mei Audrey beat me to it and she pointed out that if the skill set of these workers are obsolete, what we really need to do is not renew / extend their work permit when it expires. In her opinion, the policies should be concurrently tightened in such a way that the new intake will be qualified enough. (On further thoughts, I believe this would be a little difficult to implement even though I agree with this in principle. The reason being, what are employers who can’t find a better qualified staff going to do when the permit of his current employees expire?)

Frankly speaking, I consider the above suggestion to be completely ridiculous and hare-brained. The first first thing that came to my mind was: “Who is going to pay for it?” (The PAP has taught us too well to always ask this question, and that actually came before “Are you out of your fucking mind?!“)

If employers are expected to pay for these training on their own without any government assistance, it is then only logical to expect them to raise the price of their services – which ultimately will be paid for by consumers like me. That simply means my cost of living will increase and how is that going to be of any good to me while the threat of a double dip recession looms? How does Mr Yeo expect me to accept these ‘extra hardships’ while I am expecting a few more years of stagnant wages if I employed?

As to the WSQ programs, are these programs partly paid by the government? If so, shouldn’t priority be given to upgrade Singaporean workers to be more productive so we can reduce our reliance on foreign workers? It would be preposterous for the government to fund the training of foreign workers from taxes levied upon the citizens when the government has always been stingy prudent when spending money. It seems to me that Mr Yeo is so confused he can’t get his priorities right. Perhaps he is tired and if that is the case voters in his ward should help him along with his retirement from politics in 2016. After all, he has certainly given me the impression that he – if not the so-called labour movement that he is a part of – does not take the interests of Singaporeans to heart at all.

In fact, I would like to see more priority given in ensuring that all of these foreign workers are really qualified in the first place. The Ministry of Manpower [MOM] should do do more verifying the qualifications of all foreigners seeking employment in Singapore, especially after the case where 18 Chinese nationals were jailed over with forged degrees. I was recently told that even maids now have to take an English exam before they can be employed here, and I certainly like to see some foreigners taking up Professionals, Managers, Executives and Technicians [PMET] positions in Singapore go through the same English test as well because I have very often come across emails which are almost intelligible.

These days, I have seen foreigners with dazzling qualifications from universities I have never heard of taking up IT positions of other roles in the department. Unfortunately, their performance made some of us wonder whether they are actually capable of what they are employed to do. That’s not mentioning that we have never heard of those universities in the first place. Perhaps I am just an ignoramus but one of my colleague had tried to look up their rankings and none of these universities even ranked anywhere near NUS or NTU.

That is why I actually hoped that the MOM would set up some kind of central examination center where foreigners applying for professional and technical positions in Singapore should be tested, just like how IT professionals obtain their Microsoft Certified Professional [MCP] certification. They should be made to pay for the test, and until they have pass that test they should not be given employment in Singapore at all! If they failed this ‘verification test’ they can be allowed to retake as often as they like as long as their visa remain valid and they can pay for it (but not more than once every two weeks). That would give some charlatans second thoughts if they try to push their luck, not to mention generate some revenue out of these foreigners for our country as well.

If the government is concerned that this might drive the talents away, let’s stop kidding ourselves. I am sure even the government acknowledged that many of these are not even the best countries like China or India has to offer. A lot of those really talented ones either stay in their home country to make a name for themselves or head off to the United States. Since those who are coming here are almost certain not to be the best, why are we even sucking up to them at all? If they feel humiliated by a simple test then it is clear their characters are flawed. So, good riddance to bad rubbish!

As I mentioned earlier, we should get our priorities right and our priority should be to ensure that these people at least measure up to our standards of talent while the weeds are rooted out. So, just why the hell are we even talking about upgrading the skills of foreign workers in the first place?