
Check out Singaporeans' top 3 2013 Budget wishes
22% are hoping for good news on employment.
According to a Pre-Budget 2013 Feedback Exercise on Singaporeans' wishlist by REACH, the top three feedback topics received were:
Employment (22 per cent of total inputs)
Transport (18 per cent of total inputs)
Housing (11 per cent of total inputs)
Contributors expressed hopes for more to be done to ensure that Singaporeans remain employed with good jobs, and for Singaporeans' wages to keep pace with inflation and the rising cost of living.
There were also calls for more to be done to help older workers, such as providing flexible work hours and adequate wages to help the elderly low-income workers.
Many also urged for less reliance on foreign labour and to further tighten foreign employment. They suggested providing more re-training programmes to help local workers stay relevant, and granting training incentives to attract locals into blue-collar jobs such as bus driving and crane operating.
Contributors also called for SMEs to take a lead in improving productivity and to revamp their workflow to rely less on foreign labour. In this regard, there were calls for the Government to provide more support to ease these companies' overheads, such as rental subsidies and tax incentives.