From The Straits Times
By Su-Ann Chia
Published 13 Mar 2010
WHITE-COLLAR workers will be offered a mound of courses and training places in the next five years.
The move by the Government is to help professionals, managers, executives and technicians, or PMETs, be more versatile with a wide range of skills as well as deepen their knowledge in their core expertise.
One new training programme to be launched later this year is business management.
It will cover 10 key 'horizontal skills' in areas such as sales and marketing, negotiation, and risk management.
There will also be more upgrading paths through the diploma, degree and postgraduate levels.
These will be in key growing sectors such as digital animation, human resources, aerospace, environmental technology, sustainable manufacturing and energy management.
The new moves were announced by Minister of State for Manpower Lee Yi Shyan.
He also said the number of training places for PMETs will increase by five times. It will rise from 50,000 last year to 240,000 by 2015.
This means one in three training places will be designed for PMETs, who now form slightly over half of the workforce. 'It is an enormous effort, but a necessary jump,' he said.
Mr Lee was responding to MPs such as Mr Seng Han Thong (Yio Chu Kang), Mr Wee Siew Kim (Ang Mo Kio GRC) and Mr Zainudin Nordin (Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC) during the debate on his ministry's budget.
They had asked for an update on help schemes for PMETs who bore the brunt of the recent recession with more losing their jobs, and taking longer to find work.
Mr Lee said the Government has paid attention to their plight, in particular building up training programmes through the Continuing Education and Training (CET) framework.
Citing two achievements, he said that last year was a 'milestone year' for this group of workers.
One, a new scheme was introduced, Professional Skills Programme, which brought together the entire range of PMET training programmes and services under CET.
Two, around 71,500 PMETs went for training from December 2008 to January this year. They make up a third of the 205,000 workers trained last year.
Mr Lee also disclosed that the Workforce Development Agency is looking into setting up an online self-service portal for individuals to monitor and plan their training.
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