Singapore
Focus on the 40-plus
Government paying special attention to older citizens for a very good reason. By Seah Chiang Nee.
Feb 28, 2005

MORE and more 40-plus workers are speaking out about how their lives are tossed upside down by the changing economy.

Karen Goh, 45, a customer service representative earning S$2,500 to S$3,000 a month, was laid off last year. She applied for a lower-paid position in another department in the same company eight months later.

George Thomas, 46, told the Straits Times he had lost a five-figure salary as a currency broker in Tokyo but is now happy with a S$1,600-a-month job as an administrative assistant.
Karen and George are luckier than many others around their age who have lost their jobs to restructuring.

Official statistics show that more than half (54.3%) of the 2,962 laid-off workers in the first quarter of last year were aged 40 or older.

They include executives and supervisors. Employers make it clear they prefer hiring younger people.

In August, Singapore will observe its 40th year of independence with a group of citizens most responsible for its progress probably having the least reason to celebrate.

Worst hit are those above 55. Although they enjoy some perks - such as cheaper public transport, movie tickets (weekdays) and other entertainment fees - they make up a larger proportion of Singapore's lowly educated and sickly, and are among the first to face retrenchment.

It is ironic. Singapore's retirement age is 62, yet middle-age workers are finding jobs hard to come by.

Premature layoff began decades ago as the republic moved into a high-tech economy. Jobs of older, less-educated workers were taken over by fresh graduates.

The upgrading was deemed crucial and therefore harshly executed. The changes swept across the land, from political leaders to civil servants, but it was biased more towards knowledge than against the aged.

Needless to say, it caused a lot of pain when people who had given years of good service found themselves out in the cold.

As a young journalist, I remember reporting the gradual replacement of tough, street-wise CID officers with young graduates given the task of fighting crime.

Losing your job to a policy created a lot of resentment and crime-solving was initially affected.

Many senior detectives were dialect-speaking with hardly an O-level but were extremely streetwise about triads and their activities.

The transition spread throughout the civil service hierarchy, which saw an exit of senior, non-graduate officials.

It was not a money-saving exercise, since graduates required higher salaries. Salaries in fact rose. The whole society slid towards higher qualifications.

The age issue arose in politics within the ruling People's Action Party's itself. It was called a Self-renewal Programme.

While it swept every election, the PAP frequently replaced its own Cabinet ministers and MPs.

This intensified although the retirement age was rising from 55 to 60, then 62. Incumbent politicians were being asked to leave after three or four terms (each usually lasting four years).

On several occasions, embittered MPs complained about being retired when they were at the prime of their professional life.

Some of them were long-time warriors and close aides who had fought alongside Lee Kuan Yew in his early struggles. They felt annoyed that they had to make way for fresh outsiders who were not even party members. It became a conflict that was confined within itself.

The sentiment was as bad in the civil service when experienced executives who were without a degree were downgraded or told to go.

The self-renewal, which changed about 25% of the 80-or-so parliamentarians in every election, was to rejuvenate the government by bringing in younger candidates.

The objective has been to ensure that the party gets fresh blood who knows how the young generation feels.

It was not, of course, aimed at ringing out the old and bringing in the young, but clearly it set the pace for many private employers who thought it a good idea.

At any rate, it reduced wage costs. "In some trading houses, employers were sacking 40-plus workers and replacing them with young 'cheaper' people," one union leader complained to me.
But during the past seven or eight years, the trend has worsened as China and other "lower-cost" countries pulled away investors from Singapore. Mostly, manufacturing workers were affected.

The hardest hit were those in the 40-plus age group. As a general perception, economic restructuring has become synonymous with unemployment and middle age with job vulnerability.
For an affluent but high-cost society that is ageing rapidly, this doesn't augur well for the future.

In the recent years of high unemployment, many middle-class Singaporeans had found it hard to look after their aged parents in addition to their own families.

The number of parents filing for a court order for their non-cooperating children to provide for them is rising.

The Maintenance of Parents Act enables parents to do so. The cases last year numbered 105, compared to 88 in 2003.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has been concentrating most of his time tackling domestic problems like these, including the dilemma of the aged.

With general election possibly months away, it poses political problems for Lee who will face his first test as Prime Minister.

It is generally believed that the older generation, who lives in the Housing Board heartland, provides the staunchest traditional support for the ruling party.

If it feels disenchanted or left out of the economic recovery, it may be reflected in the polls results.

Lee recently announced a package of measures to help older workers, the needy and jobless, including helping them to keep or look for jobs as well as more healthcare aid.

The situation is serious enough for union leaders to call on the government to reserve some jobs for older or unskilled workers.

The government has rejected it as detrimental to Singapore's competitiveness.
The biggest obstacle is an employers' view that people above 45 are over the hill.

In five years' time, some 53% of Singapore's workforce will be 40 or older.

This article was published in The Sunday Star on Feb 27, 2005