I saw Jeffrey again this week and never failed to recognise the lethargy displayed on his face.
I always thought that he is older than me slightly and was shocked to realise that our birthday is only a few days apart when we exchanged information on our age…
Having only worked for around ten months in a 5-year period it is not difficult to visualise how prolonged unemployment has played tricks on both the mind and body.
The person who is working tend to be quicker in his walking pace and seems assured of himself.
I wanted to see him earlier but he has changed the appointment - anyway its always good to be able to see your clients again – hopefully in happier circumstances.
My kind of work is tricky as you don’t want to see your customers twice – it means that the person is still not working. Nevertheless, I always try to keep tabs on those who are difficult to be rehired i.e who are above 50 years old and with little transferable skills.
Engineers and IT specialists have the more difficult-to-place skills as not only are they deem obselete but the region is flushed with cheaper and younger third world engineers keen to work here for a quarter of their pay.
Its a lose-lose situation for our jobless over-the-hill engineers and IT managers.
Jeffrey and I talked a little about the warm weather and his coughing which I detected is still there when I met him three months ago.
He is also a IT helpdesk specialist and attained his programming degree in the mid 2000 from SIM.
Jeffrey never fails to amaze me as he is always upgrading himself – he told me that e2i has sent him something on a IT helpdesk upgrading course costing $7000 but after all the subsidy he only pays around $1000.
“Its a good deal isn’t it,” he said encouragingly. “It’s a train-and-place programme and after the one-month course I will be able to be placed with a software company.
How much will the pay be? I asked curiously.
“It should be about $1200.”
I tried not to be too discouraging here and told him that he should go for it as these might be baby steps to something better.
I always encouraged the jobless I seen – almost on a daily basis now, to take sbaby teps to get out of their bottomless pit.
It could be a part-time job or a course as the activities generated tend to lift the miserable spirits out of the jobless community. Once you are on the move, the brain starts to click together and psychology will play its part.
Simply staying at home and wait for the ideal job will be the last thing you want to do – especially if you have being doing that for the past 6 to 9 months.
How about the family? Do they view you as lazy and incompetent? I asked.
I always felt that prolonged joblessness will not only hurt your pocket but also the family.
After staying jobless for 18 months during the 2001/02 crisis, I knew how staying off work for a prolonged period could impair relationship with your family members.
We have seen at least 20% of jobless clients experiencing marital difficulties as a result of prolonged unemployment. Some have even divorced and experienced severe trauma as they have lost the biggest support during a very tough period of their life.
In our Asian context, the man is still seen as the breadwinner even though our women here have excel much in the work force.
Jeffrey has confided in me that currently for the past five years, his wife has being paying for most of the household expenses.
It is fortunate that Jeffrey and his wife have shared their finances together all this while and that his wife allows him to use her money.
I told him that for many families here, the wives tend to keep their own money but the husband’s account is shared.
“Are you acting like a house husband? I asked him as he sipped his cup of ice cold water gingerly with both hands.
“You can say that,” he replied nonchantly.
“I get up at around 6am every morning and fetch my daughter and wife to school and work respectively.”
“I then park the car at my mum’s place till around 1 pm and fetch the daughter back from school later in the afternoon. I pick my wife back from the office at around 7 pm later.” His daughter is in primary school still.
It was a ferrying routine that he has performed for the past few years while he was unemployed and more importantly he felt useful.
When he was working for ten months two years ago, he has to pack them off in a park nearby the school and it was still dark as he has to rush off to work by 8am.
I asked if he enjoyed the house-husband role as it meant that he couldn’t earn his own keep and probably lost the respect of his family members.
“It’s already lost long time ago,” he told me matter-of-factly.
He told me that he nearly couldn’t make it to a holiday trip recently during the June school holiday with his family as they didn’t want to include him.
I could feel his sadness as he spoke as I experienced the same kind of exclusion during the period while I was jobless in 2001/02. It was the deepest stab to one’s heart and I couldn’t imagine how your own family could do this to another family member.
He told me how his older son didn’t respect him many years ago when he started to stay at home and let his wife be the main bread winner.
“Maybe I should go back to work and gain back his respect for me as a father,” he told me.
Yet, he also worried that once he starts to return to work, his wife and daughter will have to wait at the park nearby the school as he could not ferry them there later.
I told him that his daughter can take the school bus and learn to be a bit more independent.
He stared into space silently as his thoughts raced by at the decisions he have to make to keep his house in order.
Is it too late already as none of his family members give him the respect that he so cherish all this while.
It will be sad if he loses his family in the near future if things remain the way it is.
As Singapore continues to grabble with age discimination in the work place, there are really very few statistics that connect unemployment to broken family ties.
According to my working experience with Transitioning these few years, my take is that prolonged unemployment severely cripples the strong family ties that individuals have always wanted.
Perhaps, our Asian society is still not ready to accept our women folks becoming the main bread winner with the father staying at home to be the house husband.
Men, who are more egoistic here, also prefers to work and not stay at home – even though the wages earned may be meagre.
Many European countries have long embrace this social norm in their countries as women tend to be able to get rehired easily compared to men.
However, with many of our well-educated women rising up the social ladder at the work place and our older men being routinely displaced by cheaper younger foreign executives, this phenomenon may be getting more common in the near future.
The big question is – are we ready for this hierarchy change in our society?
Written by: Gilbert Goh
Everything happens for a reason. At times, we find ourselves in situations which we cannot control. I dropped a good job in Singapore to join my family here in Australia but I am unable to get a job in my field here, I am forced to do lower level jobs to earn my keep. I felt bad at first but over time I realized that alot of people are in the same situation. I may have lost my status and confidence but at least I have my pride intact by being employed constantly for the last 3 years. If you are willing to work hard and get your hands dirty, you will find a way. All the best!
Why is he still driving a car when he has been jobless for so long? Is it a necessity? Like what Gilbert said, his daughter can travel by school bus. His wife can also take the MRT or bus to work. Why waste money on a car when he should be saving as much as he can now?
A few years ago, I always saw an ang moh house husband bringing his 2 daughters to the playground below my flat. He was there almost very weekday morning and his wife would bring the kids there on weekends. They are a very happy family as I heard the kids laughing and enjoying themselves. I have not seen them for a long time and I think they have moved.
I see nothing wrong with house husbands if he is competent in housework and cooking. I heard that the men who have gone through NS can cook better and can even be more skilful than women in taking care of babies. Many chefs are also men. They are also taller and can clean places where shorter women cannot reach eg. the windows and fans.
It is just that we have to change our mindsets to see them as skilful, if not more skilful than women. We should see all careers as equally deserving of our respect from housewives or house husbands to cleaners etc.
DO NOT SIGN UP FOR TRAIN-AND-PLACE PROGRAMMES. These are BS courses in which usually there is very little good jobs in those industries. Train-and-place also means it is mainly up to you to get yourself a job — they don’t really help much and they will direct you to pathetic jobs for you to take up. If you don’t accept the pathetic jobs, they can fail you in the course for “bad attitude”.
If all they can come up with is a *possible* job with $1.2K salary, then at most the course fee they should charge should be $100, NOT $1000.
Most of the public don’t know — these training companies will scheme and scam for the jobless trainees to “work” in any old shit company for at least 6 months. This criteria is to qualify the training company to collect the full training fees from WDA/E2I and to continue getting new jobless “students” from WDA/E2I.
Most of these place-and-train courses are by fly-by-night companies looking to dig money from desperate jobless people. Most of the money are also being dug from taxpayers money, since WDA and E2I subsidise such courses. In a way, WDA and E2I are acting as marketing agents for these dubious training companies, directing and mentally forcing jobless people to pay money for such courses.
If these courses and their industries are so good, WDA and E2I would have tie-up with companies in the industry to first hire the jobless prospects, and then send them for the training. These are the PLACE-AND-TRAIN programmes, which are much better and should be explored by jobless people. BUT GOOD THINGS NOT EASY. There are always thousands of people (most of them actually have jobs) who always apply for these place-and-train programmes. The competition to get into a place-and-train programme is always tough.
Whether is train & place programme or place & train programme organised by wda, e2i, cdc, cdac or caliberlink etc, better think one hundred times before you pay the money or sign the agreement.
For the train & place programme, usually you will still have to pay a certain amount of money even though it is subsidise or at a discount price. After completing the training, they will usually offer you pathetic jobs with pathetic wages. Take it or leave it.
The train & place programme scheme started during the late 90s under SDC before e2i was formed.I have fell for this type of train & place programme trap before, organised by SDC.
For the place & train programme, you have to sign the agreement first before they sent you for training. During the training duration, you maybe call back to work. If you want to quit from the programme, they will ask you to pay money to compensate for their investment in you. The jobs they offer are usually pathetic jobs with pathetic wages too.
Read the agreement carefully, if the compensation is less than $10k then they can’t ask the court to declare you for bankruptcy according to S’pore law. However they can lodge a claim thru small claims court & summon you for consultation / mediation. Sometimes, they might even hire debt collector or lawyer to sent you letters or pay you a visit. But it is not cheap to hire them. Fear not for the lawyer letters, it is just lawyer letters, not court letters. You can call the police & complain that your peace & sleep has been disturb if the debt collectors visit you.
I have fell for this type of place & train programme trap before, organised by caliberlink. We were worried when we quit from the programme. When the HR mgr asked me to pay money, I told the HR mgr i am jobless & have no money to pay. If they want to sue me, go ahead & sue me. The company stopped bothering me after a few rounds of phone calls. As for caliberlink, they just kept quiet & hide one side.
Some observations:
1) Car – It is ridiculous that a struggling family with only one breadwinner is still operating a car. Unless the wife is a high flying senior manager, this is a BAD idea. Even if the car was bought before the COE hike, it will still cost ~$1.5k all-in monthly, that’s close to 30% of a mid-manager’s salary.
2) IT Upgrading Course – Though the pay might be low and there’s a chance he could get conned & get nothing in the end, I agree with Gilbert that he should still participate. The important thing is to get him going out to do something as opposed to staying at home “stonning”.
3) Stay at home Dad – Interestingly despite not having much to do staying at home, there was no mention of what exactly Jeffrey did to help the household other than ferrying the wife & daughter around. I dun think his losing respect from the family stems solely from being out of work, it could also be that he is percieved as bumming around and making no contributions (even if non-monetary) to the household.
4) Worry on working – Citing being worried that his wife and daughter will have to wait at the park nearby if he starts working is pathetic. Seems more like an excuse not to do anything.
I agree with Anon & jj above.
Be careful of those heavily subsidized courses offered by WDA/e2i, whether it’s Place & Train or Train & Place. After the course, they may offer you a pathetic paying job or you are supposed to look for a course-related job yourself. If you can’t find a job within 6 months, e2i may ask you to pay back the subsidized portion of the course which can amount to 90%.
e2i is just desperate to get people employed for obvious reasons, i.e. for good statistic reporting. Anyway, for those people on courses, they are considered employed! Furthermore, once you accept their pathetic job offer, they will happily take you off their Job Assistance List. After that, as far as they are concerned, they have one very happily employed Singaporean.
Those companies that provide training for e2i have a good reason for doing so. They are just after the subsidized part(paid from taxpapars’ money) of the courses. That can amount to a very substantial amount.
The government is always talking about retraining & reskilling. For what? It’s a waste of time & taxpayers’ money. What are the meaningful jobs? Jobs that will not make us UNDER-EMPLOYED.
The whole thing is nothing but a wayang show.
Some companies worked with wda, e2i, caliberlink etc to conduct the Place & Train or Train & Place programmes. But some companies conducted the programmes on their own recruitment as they afraid the programmes will be review & examine by wda, e2i, caliberlink.
Job seeker must be very careful when signing the document on these Place & Train or Train & Place programmes. E.g. asian food channel.
The operation mgr asked me to go down for interview for the customer service executive. In the end, it turned out to be a Place & Train programme. They will employ you but will send you for a customer service course & you will sign a contract with them. If you break the bond, you will pay them money. The Place & Train requirement was never stated in the recruitment ad.
The interview was a unpleasant one. I almost wanted to scold the operation mgr & HR mgr. I felt that this is a employment trap.I turned down the job offer immediately.
More & more companies are using Place & Train or Train & Place programmes to curb high manpower turnover rate. Especially for those pathetic jobs with pathetic wages. Some might pay you $2.5k/mth but they expect you to work hard & work fast. Very soon you will slog like a dog.
Hi All,
I posted a job advert looking for sales people here but it was taken down by the adminstrator. I wonder why?