ASIA NEWS

SINGAPORE

SINGAPORE TO PROGRESSIVELY RAISE RETIREMENT AND RE-EMPLOYMENT AGES

FROM JULY 2022, the retirement age in Singapore will be raised to from 62 to 63 and the re-employment age from 67 to 68. By 2030, the retirement age is set to be raised to 65 and the re-employment age to be increased to 70. Under this framework, employers cannot terminate an employee on grounds of age before the statutory retirement age. “Workers have the assurance of continued employment up till the statutory re-employment age if they are able and wish to do so,” said Tan See Leng, Singapore’s Manpower Minister.

INDONESIA

INDONESIA PRIORITISES WORKPLACE SAFETY AND WORKER’S HEALTH

BUDI GUNADI SADIKIN, Indonesia’s Health Minister, has called for more attention to be paid to the safety of workers in the workplace, particularly their health. He said, “The COVID-19 pandemic reminds us of the importance of occupational health and safety to protect workers from the potential dangers of occupational diseases and other health problems, including infectious diseases or diseases that are currently endemic.”

JAPAN

JAPANESE WORKERS HAPPY WITH JOB CHANGE

A RECENTLY RELEASED

SURVEY conducted by Japan’s Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry found that 53.4% of respondents said they are satisfied with their new jobs, while 11.4% said they are not. About 10,000 people who had changed jobs from around 17,000 offices with five or more employees responded to the survey. They were people who switched jobs between October 1, 2019, and September 30, 2020. The gap between the satisfied and dissatisfied stood at 42.0 percentage points, which is slightly lower than the 43.0 percentage-point difference in the previous survey conducted in 2015.

PHILIPPINES

MSMES IN THE PHILIPPINES TOLD TO ENSURE PAYMENT OF 13TH MONTH PAY

THROUGH THE SMALL BUSINESS CORPORATION, businesses in the Philippines can apply for loans to pay for their employees’ 13th month bonus, which is mandated by law to be provided. The loan programme can cover up to 40 employees per establishment and the loanable amount is at PHP12,000 (US$240) per current employee. Earlier, the Department of Labour and Employment (DOLE) had issued guidelines stating that the 13th month pay should be proportionate to the number of days the employees reported for work after work was suspended due to the pandemic.

MALAYSIA

MALAYSIA STEPS UP PROTECTION FOR SELF-EMPLOYED AND GIG WORKERS

THE MALAYSIAN GOVERNMENT will be subsidising 80% of the insurance cost under the Social Security Organisation (Socso) for gig workers and the self-employed from 2022 onwards. Deputy Human Resources Minister Datuk Awang Hashim, said, “The government has agreed to subsidise up to 80% of the RM238 (US$57) insurance cost for gig workers under the scheme. This means that those under the scheme will only have to pay the remainder with some only having to pay about RM20 (US$4.47).”

TAIWAN

TAIWAN EMPLOYEES AMONG THOSE IN ASIA WHO WORK LONGEST HOURS

WORKERS IN TAIWAN WORKED more hours than those in other countries in the world last year except for three other countries. According to Huang Wei-Chen, an official with Taiwan’s Ministry of Labour’s Department of Labour Standards and Equal Employment, said Taiwan’s average number of working hours appears to be high because the hours worked by parttime workers are included in the calculation. In terms of the highest average number of hours worked in 2020, Singapore ranked number one with an average of 2,288 hours logged by its workers.