Leong Mun Wai urged to not draw divisions among S'poreans

Manpower Minister Tan See Leng yesterday called on the Progress Singapore Party's Leong Mun Wai to not hurt Singapore's cohesiveness by constantly asking for employment data that differentiates between original and new citizens as well as permanent residents.

Doing so would create societal rifts, the minister said in response to the Non-Constituency MP during the debate on the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) budget.

"I urge Mr Leong - have a care," said Dr Tan. "Please don't undermine the cohesiveness that we have painstakingly built over the years."

Mr Leong had criticised what he saw as MOM's reluctance to differentiate employment data by categories of "original citizens", "new citizens" and PRs, and the decision to "lump all the figures" under one grouping of "locals".

"We do not have a clear picture of how policies have affected each category of people," he said, adding that the PSP had disputed figures Dr Tan gave last July on job creation for locals.

In a ministerial statement then, Dr Tan said the number of local professionals, managers and executives (PMEs) had grown by more than 380,000 from 2005 to 2020.

But at a September debate, the PSP's other NCMP Hazel Poa contended that a portion of these jobs could have been due to PRs taking up citizenship and foreign workers becoming PRs. Mr Leong repeated this yesterday, saying most of the 380,000 was "not a real increase".

Dr Tan replied: "We get the sense that the persistent requests from him for more information are red herrings. They are distractions from the key problem at hand."

Dr Tan pointed out that in his July ministerial statement, he had shared that the majority of local PME growth over the past decade had gone to Singaporeans born in Singapore - and he had repeated this in Parliament in September.

"But Mr Leong persists in drawing these divisions - asking for statistics splitting between original citizens, new citizens and PRs.

"We should not constantly be drawing such lines. Many of our new citizens and PRs share family ties with Singaporeans. Or they've studied, they've worked, they've contributed and they've also lived here for some time," added Dr Tan.

"They contribute to our strengths, as a society and as an economy. Singapore is an immigrant nation and openness is one of our society's core strengths that has defined who we are."