Cleaners benefit from job redesign

 

 SINGAPORE: More than 570 sanitation and vector control employees from the National Environment Agency (NEA) have benefitted from a job redesign initiative that gives them better career advancement and higher salaries, while it also increases productivity.

Other than maintaining cleanliness of the public areas in Singapore, the workers are now required to report any sanitation or vector control irregularities such as refuse spillage or damaged drains. This allows NEA to respond more readily.

With the expanded job scope, the employees have been re-designated Environment Support Assistants.

A supervisory position called Higher Environment Support Assistants has also been introduced to enhance career progression.

Under the job redesign initiative, each employee also undergoes more than 100 hours of training on literacy, personal effectiveness and communications skills to help them in their duties.

The enlarged job scope comes with a four per cent increase in monthly salary.

For example, those doing cleaning work can see their total average monthly gross salary with bonus and allowance increase from the range of S$1055 - S$1471 to S$1093 - S$1525.

NEA said the initiative has also increased productivity by 1.5 per cent.

Mr Andrew Tan, NEA's Chief Executive Officer, said: "I think this is timely in this current context in Singapore where we are helping low wage earners to find ways to improve themselves, either through training courses and re-skilling - which is what we are doing.

"What we have done is taking a small step. They have years of experience, they may not have the necessary qualifications but by sending them for training courses, we can then deploy them in more areas to work in NEA."

- CNA/ck

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