Acting Manpower Minister Gan Kim Yong (pictured) announced the five-fold course expansion to the Skills Programme for Upgrading and Resilience (Spur) on Tuesday, one month after its launch. -- PHOTO: A.B. RICHARDS FOR THE STRAITS TIMES
THOSE who want to upgrade their skills under a government-sponsored training scheme now have more choices as the number of courses has gone up from 150 to 800.
Acting Manpower Minister Gan Kim Yong announced the five-fold course expansion to the Skills Programme for Upgrading and Resilience (Spur) on Tuesday, one month after its launch.
The new Spur-approved courses include:
- More Workforce Skills Qualifications' (WSQ) courses by quality training providers in addition to the original Spur WSQ courses by CET Centres, e.g. in Human Resource, Healthcare Support, Precision Engineering, Aerospace, Information and Communications Technology. With this, all WSQ courses will be covered under Spur.
The move follows feedback from employers, unions and workers, said Mr Gan who expects retrenchments to rise after the Chinese New Year.
Layoffs are likely to hit the manufacturing and electronics sectors the hardest as companies will be severely affected by declining export demand, he added.
'We will work with them to reach out to workers and prepare them to find jobs,' he said.
Thus, the enhancements to Spur are aimed at staving off more retrenchments and helping jobless Singaporeans reskill for new jobs.
The 800 training courses include all Workforce Skills Qualifications (WSQ) courses, National Institute of Technical Education Certificate (Nitec) programmes for adults, and polytechnic diploma programmes for adults.
The $600 million Spur was launched to help companies deal with the economic downturn, by using the lull period to send workers for training instead of retrenching them.
The Government will pay for up to 90 per cent of a worker's training in approved courses. Companies can also claim up up to 90 per cent of a worker's salary from the Government, capped at $6.80 an hour, while the worker is undergoing training.
Those who are low-skilled and jobless will be paid $4 for every hour that they are on course, and the higher-skilled can get up to $1,000 a month while on training.
So far, 120 companies have signed up to send some 4,200 workers for training under Spur.
While the jobs outlook is bleak this year, Mr Gan assured Singaporeans that there are still jobs in sectors such as healthcare and hotels.
