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PROFILE : My journey to Professional Registration - Innocent Gininda

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Innocent Gininda shares his journey to becoming a registered Professional Engineer (PrEng), emphasizing the importance of mentorship, early preparation, and understanding ECSA requirements. He offers advice to aspiring PrEngs, highlighting the value of diverse feedback and a positive mindset. My journey to becoming a registered Professional Engineer (PrEng) culminated successfully in November 2024. I was fortunate to begin my career at a company with a Commitment and Undertaking (C&U) Agreement with ECSA and a robust mentorship program. This commitment to training engineers to the standard required for Professional Registration provided me with essential resources and a structured path to track my experience against ECSA requirements. Early exposure to these expectations instilled a positive outlook on registration and solidified my desire to achieve this milestone. My views on Professional Registration have remained consistently positive throughout this journey. Working alongside ...
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NEWS: Singapore's Foreign labour shortages in construction sector is a wake-up call for change

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Delays and stop-work orders because of COVID-19 shows this is the right time to re-think the way Singapore's construction sector does business, says labour economist, Kelvin Seah.


For a long time, Singapore’s strategy of augmenting its workforce with a large pool of low-skilled foreign labour had served it well.

It made economic sense: Focus on what we are good at, build a high-skilled educated workforce, and complement this with low cost, low-skilled, foreign labour acquired from abroad.

This strategy helped to keep production costs down, which in turn made our goods cheap and our companies competitive in the global market. But the recent COVID-19 pandemic has exposed just how vulnerable this strategy can make us, especially when black swan events like the pandemic hit.

Businesses in the construction sector came to a virtual halt for at least two months last year after COVID-19 swept through the worker dormitories and a circuit breaker had to be imposed.


Businesses in other sectors like F&B, cleaning, and manufacturing which relied heavily on low-skilled workers from neighbouring countries also struggled to find solutions after many of their employees were unable to return to Singapore owing to border restrictions and personal choice.

In April this year, the Ministry of National Development revealed that a large fraction of ongoing BTO projects would be delayed because of such manpower.

And most recently, CNA reported how cleanliness issues had emerged after many migrant cleaners were unable to enter Singapore.

Can we reduce our reliance on low-cost foreign labour? One suggestion is a proposal to re-introduce trade schools to boost the supply of Singaporeans working in essential areas such as construction, which rely heavily on foreign workers.

LOW WAGES DISCOURAGES LOCALS FROM TAKING UP THE TRADE


But simply introducing trade schools is unlikely to work, unless corresponding changes are made to reinvent the way companies produce.

Having such schools does not mean that Singaporeans will automatically enrol in them. We already have vocational schools in Singapore - the Institutes of Technical Education (ITE).

Unlike the trade schools of the past, pitched at the secondary level and provided narrower training in specific trades like carpentry, plumbing, or electrical fitting, today’s ITE is a postsecondary institution providing higher-level and broader training in vocational areas like engineering, info-comm technology and hospitality.



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