By Tessa Wong

WHEN organisers of a job fair at Jelutong Community Centre in Sembawang opened the doors at 9.30 am yesterday, they were greeted by a long line of waiting people.

Over 1,000 arrived within the first hour of the North West Community Development Council's (CDC) job fair yesterday. By the time it ended at 4.30pm, the number had risen to 4,800.

The event brought together 40 service industry employers offering more than 3,000 jobs and was the largest recruitment fair organised by a CDC.

Government focused on reducing job losses

INSTEAD of dwelling on numbers, the Government would rather focus on action: ensuring that help programmes recently put in place work to minimise the downturn fallout.

This was Acting Manpower Minister Gan Kim Yong's response yesterday to the prospects of further retrenchment and unemployment. He had been asked about a DBS Bank prediction that more than 99,000 jobs could be lost by next year.

'My concern is what we can do to minimise it, rather than worry about whether it's going to be 99,000 or any other number,' he said. 'My focus is on doing something. Get these programmes launched, get these programmes in place, help the companies, help the workers tap on these programmes.'

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