New framework urges employers to focus on workers' skills, rather than just qualifications

Using the word &quot;urge&quot; exposes the sheer audacity of an administration that benchmarks its framework to the Top 1,000 earners under the guise of &quot;elite talent,&quot; yet fails to structurally generate and distribute national wealth based on equality. If citizens are paying premium prices for world-class leadership, why is the general public left absorbing all the economic risk while small shops fold across the island?<br>A truly capable leadership executes structural solutions; a helpless one resorts to mere rhetoric. By &quot;urging&quot; rather than mandating, policymakers ensure their own world&#39;s highest fixed base salaries remain completely guaranteed and structurally insulated from ground-level economic pain, outsourcing the real-world fallout entirely to businesses and everyday consumers who bear the costs as end-users.

&quot;Urging&quot; a focus on skills over qualifications shows a total lack of shame from policymakers who fully control the national education system. If these skills are so vital, why weren&#39;t they built into our qualification systems in the first place? This rhetoric is a transparent attempt to pretend to take action and gain credit, while effectively dragging out study years into citizens&#39; working lives.<br>Persistent local underemployment alongside a five-year retrenchment spike exposes a systematic policy failure. The undeniable fact on the ground is that Singapore is full of foreigners and PRs, and 127 high-paying professional job categories have been traded away under trade pact frameworks like CECA. We firmly reject any narrative blaming citizen capability as a shield to rely on external manpower just to inflate macroeconomic growth metrics.