MR LIM Ah Hock, 53, is a man on a mission: Trying to make up for lost time.
Three years ago, he had to stop working as a tour guide because of high blood pressure and diabetes.
Now that he has recovered, he is rushing to return to the workforce, setting his sights on snagging a tour guide job at a hotel or the upcoming integrated resorts.
But Mr Lim knows he has to get up to speed with current service standards.
So yesterday, he completed a five-day Certified Service Professional course at NTUC LearningHub to pick up customer service skills. Next week, he will attend a computing course and he plans to sign up for English proficiency classes too.
Thus, he was glad to hear that he could get higher training subsidies, among other benefits, under the Skills Programme for Upgrading and Resilience (Spur).
PMETs (professionals, managers, executives and technicians), including jobless ones like him, can get a subsidy of 80 per cent for course fees - up from 70 to 80 per cent now. Around 45 per cent of the workforce are PMETs.
The existing Professional Conversion Programme (PCP) that equips PMETs with skills for other industries, will also be expanded to offer more career choices. This means more can qualify for a monthly PCP allowance of up to $1,000.
Mr R. Thomas, who lost his job as an operations and sales director recently, hopes that Spur can be backdated to help retrenched PMETs like him who are already on training courses. He has to pay half of the $4,000 course fee himself.
Said Mr Thomas, 45: 'At this point, any form of assistance would be helpful.'
Mr David Ang, general manager of the Singapore Professionals and Executives Cooperative, applauded the initiatives but hoped for further measures as more PMETs are expected to be hit in this downturn.
This article was first published in The Straits Times on 22 November 2008.
