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Singapore > Story
April 7, 2009
CDCs can be of more help
By Aaron Low, Political Correspondent
AFTER graduating with a double Masters’ degree in business and commerce from an Australian university, Mr R. Vijayan thought it would be breeze to land a managerial job in the service sector.
Instead, the 42-year-old, who had worked in the prison service, spent eight months in a futile search.
Turning to Central Singapore Community Development Council for help, he was directed to a course that got him a certificate in customer service last July.
And it was this humble certificate that landed him a job two months later, as an operations manager in a hotel group and earning more than $4,000 a month.
‘Ironically, it was the certificate that impressed the employer and showed that I had the skills and aptitude to do the job,’ he said on Tuesday.
Mr Vijyan’s case is not unusual, said the Central CDC’s general manager Agnes Kwek.
More than 90 per cent of the 2,500 job seekers registered with it are classified as being ‘not job ready’.
‘They may need some training so they can fit jobs in the service sector, where there are still many vacancies, or they may need to change their mindsets about job expectations,’ she said.
Such help given to Singaporeans by CDCs was praised by Manpower Minister Gan Kim Yong on Tuesday.
Speaking to reporters at the end of a tour of the Central CDC’s premises, he said he was happy to see how effectively Government policies were being carried out on the ground by CDCs.
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