The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) has clarified a remark made by Francis Yuen of the Progress Singapore Party (PSP) during the political debate that took place in the evening of July 1, 2020.

During the debate, moderator Jaime Ho asked the participants, which also included Jamus Lim of the Workers' Party, Vivian Balakrishnan of the People's Action Party, and Chee Soon Juan of the Singapore Democratic Party this question:

How would your party deal with rising unemployment, create jobs for Singaporeans young and old, and ultimately improve the lives of Singaporeans despite the bleak economic outlook here and around the world?

Yuen responding first, said:

"We need to make sure Singaporeans get priority in jobs. We have a situation now where we have the PMETs, a lot of foreign PMETs working here. I think there are about 400,000 of them. And yet we have more than a 100,000 of these PMETs that are out of (a) job."

39,000 unemployed local PMETs as of June 2019

Yuen said there was a possibility to "ease off" some of these jobs held by foreign PMETs.

He added that PSP believes that foreign PMETs were needed as a complement, but there was an opportunity to "slow it down".

In its clarification, MOM cited the Report on Labour Force in Singapore 2019, released on Jan. 30, 2020.

It states there are 39,000 local unemployed PMETs in Singapore as of June 2019. Local unemployed PMETs includes both Singapore citizens and Permanent Residents.

Yuen's reply

In response to the clarification, Yuen told Mothership that the June 2019 figure of 39,000 does not include retrenchments in the third and fourth quarters, and expected numbers in 2020.

He added that in the same report, MOM said that 70 per cent of retrenchments in 2019 were of PMETs.

Yuen said that given that job losses in 2020 are expected to be 100,000 to 200,000, and estimating 70 per cent retrenchment, the PSP estimated a figure of 100,000 for unemployed PMETs.

He also said: "Also we took into consideration more than 30,000 new graduates coming into the job market this year (and) a large proportion will not find jobs. There are also those PMETs displaced (that) go into the gig economy not accounted for."

You can watch what Yuen said below at around the 1:30 min mark.

Top image from CNA YouTube.