SPUR $600millions budget starts 1dec

SINGAPORE: The new Skills Programme for Upgrading and Resilience (SPUR) kicked off on Monday with a S$600 million budget to help companies retrain their excess manpower.
Two agencies, Institute for Adult Learning Singapore and travel agency Chan Brothers, said SPUR will benefit them amid the gloomy economic outlook.
At Chan Brothers, its directors said they have been seeing fewer people going on holidays. But that doesn't mean its staff are sitting still.
Ow Yeong Wai Ling, senior HR executive at Chan Brothers Travel, said: “Since it's a downturn and everything goes slow, it's the best time we can send our staff (for training). With the higher funding, it will help to defray our manpower costs and staff will get a new set of skills to prepare them for more challenges in the future.”
If the company decides to send its staff for the workforce skills qualifications certificate under SPUR, the company only pays 10 per cent of the course fees while the government bears the remaining 90 per cent of it.
For a staff aged 40 years and below, the absentee payroll for a 140-hour course is as good as his/her monthly salary in the company.
Of the S$600 million set aside for SPUR, almost half of it is for enhancing the existing continuing education and training centres and to set up new ones.
At the new Institute for Adult Learning Singapore, the focus is to prepare the trainers to meet the increase in training places. It is in close consultation with the Manpower Skills and Training Council to ensure that its programmes are in tune with the industries' needs.Dr Gary Willmott, executive director of the Institute for Adult Learning Singapore, said: "Increasingly, trainers are working at workplaces and they have to blend the workplace with their role as a trainer. They have to work not only with the trainees but also the supervisors. The assessments they provide have to have some relevance to the actual skills that people need for the job."
The institute hopes companies will not cut back on their plans to send their trainers for upgrading during these difficult times.