Mr Ang Kiam Meng, president of the Restaurant Association of Singapore, said the plan, designed to improve the language skills of service staff, will be rolled out later this year. But he declined to reveal details.

Many Singaporeans have been griping about bad experiences with foreign service staff who cannot speak English.

Mr Ang said that due to a shortage of local frontline service staff, foreign workers are here to stay.

He said: 'The foreign staff may have different accents or are not as proficient in English as it is not their first language. So I urge customers to be a bit more patient as we try to sort this out.'

The new initiative would be the first nation-wide effort to tear down the language barriers between restaurant workers and customers.

Mr Ang was speaking on the sidelines of an event at Fish & Co Glass House yesterday, where officials from the restaurant chain shared their experiences on how they improved their service standards

The seafood eatery joined the Customer-Centric Initiative in May last year and, since then, has seen its sales improve by 26 per cent.

Restaurant co-founder Ricky Chew said that in a recent mystery diner audit of 76 casual dining spots in Singapore, the chain emerged in the top three places for service. About 75 per cent of diners were pleased with its service, up 8 percentage points from last year's score.

The sector as a whole had an average score of 67 per cent, up from last year's average of 62 per cent.

National Trades Union Congress chief Lim Swee Say, who was the guest of honour at yesterday's event, said it was encouraging to see that Singapore's service standards have been improving steadily through the years.

He said that he was in Hong Kong last week on a weekend getaway. He noted that although the service standards there are deserving of recent plaudits, Singapore's own brand of service is not too far behind.

Rising prices of food and the global economic slowdown are beyond the control of business, he said. But improving service standards is one thing they can do to improve yields.

A SPOONFUL OF PATIENCE

'The foreign staff may have different accents or are not as proficient in English as it is not their first language. So I urge customers to be a bit more patient as we try to sort this out.'

MR ANG KIAM MENG, president of the Restaurant Association of Singapore