FROM January, more than 200,000 workers will be added to the list of people covered by the Employment Act, updated for the first time in 13 years.

The changes, proposed in September, are to keep pace with a changing labour market with rising salaries and more white-collar workers, said Acting Manpower Minister Gan Kim Yong .

SMALL firms can now beef up their financial management expertise under a $3 million initiative to help them tackle the effects of the financial crisis.

Vector Scorecard Asia-Pacific (Vsapac) is a private financial management firm which is offering subsidies to up to 1,000 companies interested in undergoing the programme.

MRS CONSTANCE Singam, president of the Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware), is blunt when asked why its membership has fallen in recent years.

She blames neglect.

'We were too focused on advocacy and research that we forgot to pay attention to our members,' she says. 'We never actively recruited, and we failed to renew memberships. Aware neglected them.'