Prime Minister Lawrence Wong’s National Day Rally 2024 (NDR 2024) speech on Sunday covered a number of policy announcements ranging on a wide variety of topics.
DPA would like to focus on three policy announcements/areas in particular made at NDR 2024, and take this opportunity to reiterate and re-emphasise some of our previous recommendations.
Assistance for Involuntarily Unemployed
During NDR 2024, PM Lawrence Wong provided further updates on an upcoming scheme to assist those who are involuntarily unemployed.
Entitled the “SkillsFuture Job Seeker Support scheme”, PM Lawrence Wong announced that the new scheme seeks to provide temporary financial assistance to retrenched lower and middle income workers with up to S$6,000 over a maximum period of six months, on the condition that such workers take up training, career coaching, and job matching services.
The move to provide temporary financial assistance to individuals who become involuntarily unemployed is a necessary and important one. However, job seekers with disabilities face additional barriers that the new scheme and its implementation has to consider for involuntarily unemployed persons with disabilities to benefit from the scheme equitably.
For example, the name of the upcoming scheme seems to suggest the temporary financial assistance provided through the scheme will be tied to training, career coaching, and job matching services under SkillsFuture related programming. If this is the case, this underscores recommendations that DPA has made in the past about the need for SkillsFuture programming to be optimised for accessibility and disability inclusion. For example, currently SkillsFuture training providers are not required to provide reasonable accommodations to persons with disabilities – making it difficult for persons with disabilities to participate and benefit from SkillsFuture programming.
Reasonable accommodations are essential and necessary modifications to a policy or practice that will enable persons with disabilities to participate equitably in a given setting – whether in employment or education – including life-long education. Contrary to what some might think, there are practical and tangible criteria that can be in place to determine what counts as “reasonable” when assessing reasonable accommodation requests – as we have previously highlighted.
We take this opportunity to reiterate recommendations we have made in past articles, DPA reports, and commentaries for SkillsFuture training providers to be required to provide reasonable accommodations, and for the SkillsFuture ecosystem to be enhanced to provide technical assistance to training providers in the assessment of reasonable accommodation requests and in the provision of reasonable accommodations.
While such enhancements to the SkillsFuture ecosystem are made, we recommend that the upcoming SkillsFuture Job Seeker Support scheme can also be implemented so that the training, career coaching, and job matching services that one has to undergo to receive temporary financial assistance need not be tied with SkillsFuture programming. For example, currently there are several disability Voluntary Welfare Organisations (VWOs) that provide such services for persons with disabilities and the upcoming support scheme can be expanded so that persons with disabilities undergoing training, career coaching, or job matching through such disability VWOs may also be eligible for such temporary financial support.
SkillsFuture Level Up Programme
Additionally, PM Lawrence Wong announced additions to the SkillsFuture level up programme – noting in his speech that the government plans to add additional training allowance to the programme. From next year onwards, the government aims to provide up to $3,000 a month (for a maximum of 24 months) to Singaporeans 40 years and above who take time off work to attend full-time training under SkillsFuture.
This is a very generous provision by the government. However, yet again, this underscores the urgency of enhancing and ensuring accessibility and disability inclusion throughout the SkillsFuture ecosystem.
Persons with disabilities will not be able to take advantage of the generous training allowances available on an equitable level to our non-disabled peers if improvements are not made to how SkillsFuture is regulated for accessibility and disability inclusion. Persons with disabilities have informed us that not only do they face difficulty in participating in SkillsFuture courses, but that some training providers have denied them from taking their courses without even having a conversation with the person with disability to explore reasonable accommodation options – despite the person with disability being willing to educate.
As we have previously highlighted, including in our recent employment report published earlier this year, ensuring accessibility and disability inclusion in SkillsFuture is vital in improving the overall economic prospects of persons with disabilities. As persons with disabilities face higher rates of unemployment, less than half the employment rate of the general public, and the prevalence of under-employment – due to an employment landscape that is still not inclusive as it should be to persons with disabilities, the government should ensure that the unique barriers faced by persons with disabilities are particularly taken into consideration when developing such financial supports.
Upgrades to School Infrastructure
During NDR 2024, PM Lawrence Wong also noted on further funding and developments to Singapore mainstream schools. This will include redesigns and upgrades to science laboratories, libraries, and other learning spaces. Additional resources will also be given to schools with more students from “disadvantage backgrounds”.
While the Prime Minister did not specify disability, we hope and strongly recommend that such new redesigns and upgrades contain provisions and plans to include, enhance, or optimise accessibility features to ensure more and more students with disabilities who wish to attend mainstream schools will be able to do so.
As we have previously highlighted, the need to optimise the accessibility and inclusivity of mainstream schools for students with disabilities is not only important to foster a truly inclusive society, but it is also important to bring Singapore closer to its obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).
We should always aim for our mainstream schools to be spaces where students with and without disabilities can learn, play, discover the world, and thrive together and alongside each other. We thus would like the government to clarify and provide specifics on how the upcoming redesigns to mainstream schools will include new or enhanced accessibility features targeted specifically in enhancing the mainstream school experience for students with disabilities.
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During NDR 2024, PM Lawrence Wong emphasised the need for a “reset” in policies and attitudes in navigating the uncertainties of the times we live in.
“Realising our new ambitions will require a major reset – a major reset in policies, to be sure; but also a reset in our attitudes,” PM Lawrence Wong said.
We at DPA thus hope and strongly recommend that such resets will be inclusive of persons with disabilities from the get-go for persons with disabilities to be able to benefit equitably from such policy developments as our non-disabled peers.
In addition to our on-going efforts in collaborating with existing partners, DPA continues to invite any new collaborations with individuals and groups from the public and private sectors towards addressing such outcomes and objectives.
