In March last year, Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry Lee Yi Shyan said that JTC Corporation will phase out the Scheme for Housing of Foreign Talent (SHiFT). JTC had bought the resale flats from HDB in 1997, as part of SHiFT. The flats were bought over then because HDB had many excess flats. The housing bubble had collapsed in Singapore at that time, and then-National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan revealed that this resulted in 31,000 unsold flats. By 2005, 540,000 flats that had been bought by JTC under the scheme. However, due to the backlash over the Population White Paper last year, the government was forced to backtrack on this scheme. Non-Constituency Member of Parliament Lina Chiam had asked if the government could suspend the scheme and instead rent the flats to lower-income Singaporeans who cannot afford to buy flats and need them. Mr Lee said then, “JTC expects to continue to run down the stock of the remaining SHiFT flats as the tenancy agreements expire. However, TRS understands from a reader that the scheme is still ongoing. The reader had spoken to his neighbours who are foreign workers from a neighbouring country and understood that they had rented their HDB flat from the JTC. Last year, prime minister Lee Hsien Loong said, “One of the focuses was to try our best to see how we could speed up the construction of more dorms, so that the workers who are now housed in HDB estates or private properties, which have been rented out, they can be put in proper dorms.” Today, there are about 40 dorms in Singapore, which have 200,000 beds. Another nine with 100,000 beds is expected to be built in the next two years. However, by June this year, there are already 321,000 construction workers in Singapore, and a total of 1,336,700 foreign workers. This means that there is a drastic shortage of adequate housing for foreign workers. Also, over the past year, the rents at these dorms have been jacked up which have led employers to look for cheaper alternatives, where living conditions can compromise on the workers’ health. SHiFT is eligible only for Employment Pass (EP) holders or permanent residents (PRs), which includes the 176,600 on EP pass and the 531,200 PRs. So, it looks like there are two layers of problems here. First, the government hasn’t stepped up on the construction of purpose-built dorms for foreign workers are to at least regulate the housing provided for them to ensure that their living conditions are adequate. This has thus resulted in a lack of suitable housing for foreign workers, which also affects the housing available for Singaporeans. There is a structural lack of adequate housing for Singaporeans and foreigners alike, but there are still no clear statistics from the government on the number of housing in Singapore and whether there is enough for the inhabitants on this island.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Nov 2014 06:25:07 +0000
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