By Aaron Low

The labour movement is moving speedily to help 194,000 members affected by the recession this year with $23.2 million worth of cash, vouchers and bursaries.

Mindful that many families need help urgently, some programmes were rolled out immediately yesterday by the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC). It represents 500,000 unionised workers.

Speaking to reporters at the launch of the U Care funded schemes, NTUC secretary-general Lim Swee Say said the labour movement is making extra effort to disburse funds to needy workers as fast as possible.

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CDCs help more find jobs

With the economy in a tailspin, 27,200 people sought help from community development councils (CDCs) to find jobs during the first four months of this year, an increase of more than two times from about 13,200 during the same period last year.

According to latest released figures from the Workforce Development Agency (WDA), successful job placements too are on the rise.

Thanks to the collective efforts of the five CDCs here and the Employment and Employability Institute or e2i, NTUC's job training and placement arm, 10,500 job seekers were placed between January and the end of April. For the whole of last year, the CDCs managed to place 13,000 job seekers.

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