Foreign worker quota cuts: Tough love for the construction sector

Annabeth Leow

Published Wed, Feb 19, 2020 · 09:50 PM

Singapore

THE Budget put millions of much needed rescue dollars on the table for tourism-related sectors reeling from the Covid-19 outbreak. But construction got tighter quotas on skilled foreign labour, instead of targeted goodies.

These curbs - though unwelcome for industry players - have been read as a sign that the government is looking beyond the virus crisis and pressing on with a big-picture goal to transform manpower-intensive industries.

Still, they may not mean a derailment of the sector's recovery, watchers said. Construction returned to full-year growth of 2.8 per cent in 2019, after three years in contraction.

Headwinds like the global spread of Covid-19, which is threatening the material and manpower supply from its origin country of China, "has made us expedite the ITM process", said Victor Ong, president of the Singapore Institute of Building Ltd trade group…