Govt projects affected by foreign worker shortage

PropertyGuru

30 May 2014 at 1:52 am

Over the past two years, HDB has granted 36 projects some form of time extension.

In response to a query in Parliament yesterday, the Ministry of National Development (MND) said the reasons for these extensions include changes in design beyond contractors' control, or exceptionally bad weather. "Of these, liquidated damages were levied on six contractors for delays in seven projects, due to various reasons such as poor project planning, coordination and execution."

MND also encouraged contractors to adopt more mechanisation and productive construction methods to reduce reliance on foreign workers.

In the recent debate on the President's Address, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said the government has tightened up on construction workers by raising levies, reducing quotas and insisting on higher productivity when it comes to constructing new houses and structures.

There are currently about 300,000 construction workers and the government is a big part of the construction business. However some government projects which are less urgent have been deferred to help ease the shortage of construction workers.

"When it comes to HDB houses, when it comes to trains, projects which are urgent, we are going full steam ahead. But there are other projects which can wait one or two years. We can defer them, we can study them a bit more, we can phase them out, so that we can spread out the demand for construction workers, and then you will be able to manage the total number of construction workers in Singapore," PM Lee said.

About $2 billion worth of government projects will be shelved and this will save 20,000 or 30,000 workers. As such, the new Science Centre and extensions to Gardens by the Bay will take slightly longer to complete.

Separately, in blog post on 20 May, National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan explored how using robotics on construction sites for labour intensive tasks such as tiling could improve productivity.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons/User: Ziad

Muneerah Bee, Senior Journalist at PropertyGuru, wrote this story. To contact her about this or other stories email muneerah@propertyguru.com.sg

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