By Lim Wei Chean

CLOSE to 50,000 workers in the service sector will be getting training to improve themselves over the next few years, and the Government will foot the bill.

But perhaps more important for the workers, being put on the training programme means they will get to keep their jobs - the scheme aims to help employers keep their staff during the downturn by defraying their costs.

The $100 million programme, launched last month, is meant to bring service standards in the retail, health-care, food and beverage and hospitality sectors to a higher level.

Companies sign up with agencies like Spring Singapore and the Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA) to get their workers on it. Training is conducted either by external trainers or by WDA-approved firms and institutes.

Since the programme, called Phase 2 of the Go the Extra Mile for Service (Gems) drive, was launched, some 14 malls and 30 companies, with 34,000 workers in total, have said they will sign up for it.

They include mall owner Capitaland Retail, the Grand Mercure Roxy Hotel, shoe and bag retailer Charles & Keith and health-care company Raffles Medical.

Twelve other companies which had gone through Phase 1 of Gems have decided to sign up for the second phase. They have 14,800 workers in all.

Yesterday, Mr Lim Swee Say, Minister in the Prime Minister's Office, called response to the scheme 'encouraging'.

Gems Phase 2 has twin aims: Help firms to upgrade service quality and skills, and cut costs by subsidising course fees at the same time.

It saves jobs since employers get training subsidies and are given the wages of workers whom they send for training.

Speaking at the launch of the revamped Jurong Point shopping mall yesterday, Mr Lim, who is also Secretary-General for the National Trades Unions Congress, said the top concern among Singaporeans now is how they will ride out the recession and global economic downturn.

He added: 'We decided to launch Gems 2 because we believe now is the best time for us to get through this process of transformation of the service sector and service quality in Singapore.

'It is at a down time like this that every customer becomes more important, every dollar becomes even more important.'

The companies that signed up said they are taking full advantage of the current lull period and assistance packages to improve service standards.

Said Rendezvous Hotel's general manager Kellvin Ong: 'It is especially during this low period that we need to capitalise on training so that when times are good, we will be ready.'

Companies which have sent workers for upgrading in Phase 1 of Gems say the results are clear.

Jurong Point, for example, said that since workers in its shops went for training, its mystery shopping audit results have improved by 30.2 per cent and the compliments to complaints ratio has gone up by a whopping 130 per cent. Its spokesman added that overall customer satisfaction rates also went up by 14.4 per cent.

Restaurants like Swensen's noted that having a national level training programme helped it to benchmark itself with the rest of the industry.

Gems Phase 2 is part of an expansive, and expensive, effort put together by the Government to help Singapore workers retool during the recession to gear up for better times ahead, as well as keep their jobs.

The $600 million Skills Programme for Upgrading and Resilience (Spur) and the $4.5 billion Jobs Credit Scheme are the other planks of this push.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.