MOM tells employers to adjust outdoor work during the day using 1-hour PM2.5 readings

MOM said seven employers and an administrative assistant were charged on 8 October 2026 under the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act for allegedly declaring CPF contributions for local staff who did not actually work for their companies, in order to obtain work passes. In a separate case, two people who ran an Ayurvedic centre were found guilty of paying two Employment Pass holders far less than the salaries declared in their applications.

MOM said that in 2025, the first full year after the Tripartite Guidelines on Flexible Work Arrangement Requests took effect in December 2024, around seven in 10 firms offered scheduled flexible work arrangements. It pointed employers to two grants that can help fund such arrangements: the SkillsFuture Workforce Development Grant (Job Redesign+) and the EDGE Grant.

In a written parliamentary reply, MOM said TAFEP received 59 workplace harassment complaints in 2025, and that fewer than 5% of employers asked to carry out an independent investigation did not do so; those employers were issued advisories. Under the Workplace Fairness Act, due to take effect by end-2027, employers will have to set up grievance-handling processes and investigate harassment and discrimination grievances.

Singapore’s major workplace injury rate fell to an all-time low of 14.6 per 100,000 workers in the first half of 2026, down from 15.8 a year earlier, according to MOM’s 1H2026 Workplace Safety and Health report. Fatal injuries moved the other way. The fatal injury rate rose to 1.1 per 100,000 workers (21 deaths), up…

Acting Minister for Manpower Jasmin Lau told Parliament that about 88% of employers that filed Mandatory Retrenchment Notifications in 2025 paid retrenchment benefits, and close to 80% of retrenched workers who did not receive them came from firms with fewer than 200 employees. Tripartite partners are studying retrenchment benefit payments and earlier job-matching support as part of the ongoing Employment Act review, and MOM will work on clearer guidance on disguised retrenchments.

Employment kept climbing in the second quarter, up 11,400 — the ministry’s nineteenth straight quarter of growth. But retrenchments rose too, to 4,620 from 3,830 in Q1, and job vacancies slipped to 68,600. Only 54.9% of retrenched residents found new work within six months, MOM’s latest labour market report shows.