July 11, 2024
To the Editor:
Re: Karishma Vaswani’s column “Singapore Is Making Life Tougher for Global Talent” (July 4):
The article erroneously alleges that Singapore has put in place policies that make our country less open to global talent. This gravely misrepresents the intent and rationale of our foreign workforce policies.
Like many countries, Singapore has always had policies to regulate the inflow of foreign workers, to ensure that they complement our local workforce and meet the evolving needs of our economy. Contrary to what the article implies, the introduction of the Complementary Assessment Framework, or Compass, on Sept. 1, 2023, is not aimed at restricting global talent. Instead, Compass is a new points-based framework that considers both individual and firm-related attributes to holistically evaluate an employment pass applicant’s complementarity to Singapore’s workforce. The transparent scoring criteria provides businesses with greater certainty and clarity to build a complementary foreign workforce, and enables employers to plan their hiring effectively.
Read more here: https://www.bloomberg.com/letters/2024-07-10/singapore-s-policies-continue-to-attract-global-talent-hao-shuo?srnd=letters
