On Thursday Aug 27 2020, The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) announced a revision to its foreign labour force policy, including the increase of minimum salary criteria for Employment and S Passes. This includes a higher salary requirement for Employment Pass holders in the financial services sector.
Photo from CNA
From September 2020, the lowest qualifying salary for new Employment Pass candidates will be revised from S$3,900 to S$4,500. This is the second revision of the year, where the new salary was increased by S$300 to S$3,900 in May 2020. However in December, the minimum qualifying salary for new Employment Pass under financial sector will be increased by another S$500 to S$5,000. These changes will supplement MAS’ (Monetary Authority of Singapore) initiatives to support and encourage financial institutions in developing a solid local pipeline of talent.
The new minimum salary for S Pass will be raised by S$100 to S$2,500 with effective from October 2020. The ministry also announced that S Pass jobs will be subject to the Fair Consideration Framework advertising requirement from October.
In order to give local jobseekers sufficient time to respond to job openings and for employers to seriously evaluate their applications, the minimum job advertising duration for Employment Pass and S Pass applications will be increased from 14 to 28 days from October 2020.
According to the Fair Consideration Framework, employers must have fairly considered all local candidates by advertising jobs on MyCareersFuture.sg. The selection process must be fair and properly documented with reasons for choosing a candidate over others. MOM also announced that discrimination against local job applications in favour of foreign applicants is unacceptable, and the employers may have their work pass privileges cut back and may be prosecuted.
Source: https://bit.ly/2QqWWxE
