Speech by Senior Minister of State for Transport Dr Janil Puthucheary at the Official Launch of the Skills Framework for Public Transport

Introduction

1.     Good morning, everybody. Thank you for coming here on a very wet morning. Our land transport system seems to be running very well in these conditions. It is a critical pillar of our economy and we have to make sure it serves our nation well. About 123,000 people and their jobs directly contribute to more than 1.1% of Singapore’s GDP. But, like today, whether wet or dry, it is a critical enabler of our economy, making sure that we get to our jobs, that goods get to the market, that friends can go down to the latest hipster café and meet up with friends, that families can come together on the weekends and in the evening.

2.     It is a key enabler of our economic as well as our social wellbeing. And it is an important part of our lived experience every day. It matters a lot to us, and so when we see what’s happening in the future of our land transport system, whether it’s autonomous vehicles, the disruption to business models and point-to-point sharing businesses like Grab, Ryde, Go-Jek, or the possibility of autonomous vehicles, the role that personal mobility devices play in disrupting last-mile transport, some of the ideas around Mobility-as-a-Service – how to integrate the journey from end to end, both in terms of how you plan the journeys, how you pay for your journeys, the various options and the competitiveness that we want in the business space. When we see all these things, we have to think carefully and we have to plan carefully for the future of our land transport system. These are disruptions, potentially challenges, but if we deal with them correctly, they can become opportunities.

3.     The Committee for the Future Economy, and now the Future Economy Council was constituted, and operationalised its various ideas, primarily around these frames. How do we look at the future of our economic structure, how do we look at the business opportunities that are coming our way, deal with the challenges and maximally exploit the opportunities that will be created?

4.     Our Land Transport Industry Transformation Map was launched in February. For each domain, for each industry, there is an industry transformation map. An opportunity for our tripartite partners to come together – Government, workers represented by the unions, as well as businesses – to sketch out strategy, interventions, roles and responsibilities, to address those challenges, and to make sure that ultimately, it translates to better jobs for Singapore and Singaporeans. So we have one for our land transport industry, meeting these disruptions head on, transforming our vision and using that vision to transform the industry, enabled by technology, enabled by a workforce that keeps up to date, reskilling and retraining.

Skills Framework for Public Transport

5.     And how do we do that reskilling and retraining? Well, a skills framework is the way that we’re thinking about this. Not just for land transport, but for every industry, for every industry transformation map, we’re going to have a skills framework. Today, we’re here to launch the Skills Framework for Public Transport. It thinks about and it develops strategies for a future-proof workforce. Job redesign and skills development.

6.     Why is this important for us in the public transport? I talked about some of the opportunities and challenges like the point-to-point business model, Mobility-as-a-Service, autonomous vehicles, personal mobility devices – one of the other ways to think about the challenges and opportunities facing the public land transport sector is growth. We are anticipating significant growth over the next few years. Growth in terms of our network – we are expecting to expand the rail network by 100 kilometres in the next decade; growth in terms of operations – and this is demonstrated by the investments that we are planning to make in our sector, heavy subsidies into our public transport network. Over the next five years, we anticipate spending $20 billion to expand our rail network, another $4 billion to renew the rail operating assets and $5 billion in operating subsidies for public buses. This growth needs workers; it needs employees; it means jobs to go along with it. We are expecting to grow our public transport workforce from currently 21,000 people up to 29,000 people by 2030, an increase of 8,000 new jobs. So growth in terms of our network, growth in terms of our expectations for operations, and growth in terms of our workforce.

7.     But this growth must also come with a growth in terms of skill sets and capabilities. Not all of these 8,000 jobs are going to be in roles and responsibilities that we see today. There are going to be new jobs, new types of jobs. Jobs around data science, the analysis of consumer behaviour, customer analytics. Jobs in terms of engineering – how do we maximally utilise the new technologies that are available so that engineering can be done in a different, proactive way?

8.     So, how do we plan for this? How do we plan for that growth in capability, that growth in jobs and the commensurate growth and change in how we do training? Well, that’s what we’re here to launch today – the Skills Framework for Public Transport. It has been co-created with industry, with unions, and the training providers – Institutes of Higher Learning, the professional training bodies and also the unions that play a role not just in supporting workers but in retraining workers. It provides a way to think of those skills that are a common language. How do we look at an employee, a particular job role, and explain to them what their path is for the future? How do they think about career progression? What are the skills, competencies, and certification they need in order to progress along their career? If they want to have a different career within the same industry, how might they think of moving sideways along a different track? How do we have that common language so that the employee has confidence in his career progression; the employer has a common standard, a common way, of assessing and addressing the needs and challenges for that employee; and ultimately, the training providers, whether they are Institutes of Higher Learning or professional bodies or a union, can look at that circumstance and say “Here is a course that meets your needs”, whether you are an employee, whether you are an employer.

9.     That pathway, we want it to be industry-responsive. We want the time to market for someone going into formal training to be as short as possible. We want the skills that they develop while they are undergoing training to be marketable and implementable as soon as they finish their training. So we need close links between industry and the training providers. That’s why we have this tripartite model that comes together to develop the skills framework.

10.    We also want the employees to look at the landscape and have a good sense of what their opportunities are. If I take this job, if I take the step into this industry, what are all the different possibilities that I might have, five years, 10 years from now? What are the steps that I need to take some personal responsibility over, in order to upgrade myself and develop some training and some capabilities so that these opportunities are made available to me? For the training providers, the skills framework is very important, in terms of looking at the curriculum they have developed. How do I make sure I have the right type of faculty, the professional capability within the institution to deliver this type of training, both for now, five years and 10 years, to make sure that my training remains relevant to the employee, to the employer and to the industry? And of course, for the unions, a framework like this is very important to think about where the gaps are, where the opportunities are and how they can help workers transition, especially if the worker’s job is disrupted away or some new opportunities are created. How can they be responsive in a way that serves the needs of workers?

11.    The Skills Framework for Public Transport that we are launching today is just the beginning, it meets existing needs and anticipated needs. We want this to be a work in progress, we want this to be relevant to the future. What that means is, we will need to be willing to disrupt ourselves. The Skills Framework that we are launching today may need to be revisited, revised, and completely redone over the next two, five, 10 years, who knows? It needs to be a live document and we need to commit ourselves to refreshing and updating it as we go forward. The main components of the framework will be reviewed every two years.

12.    In the next lap, we anticipate that LTA will focus on emerging trends and technologies, and develop targeted transition measures for public transport workers at risk of technological disruption. The one that is on everyone’s mind is: what will happen when autonomous vehicles appear on our streets? We worry about the jobs for our bus captains, people who are working in the industry are rightly concerned. Will there be jobs for them? What would those jobs look like? Well, the reality is autonomous vehicles are already on our streets but in a very small and limited fashion as part of testing, as part of pilot projects, as part of experimentation. The widespread roll-out of autonomous vehicles is a few years away at least, and the reality is that even as our autonomous vehicles get rolled out, there will be an extended transition period where autonomous vehicles and human-driven vehicles will have to coexist. So the jobs are likely to be there for some time.

13.    Look a little bit further ahead into the future and I think the anxieties have some truth to them. 10 years from now, it will be a bit hard to anticipate what the landscape will look like. So we need to start planning, we need to start thinking about, for example, bus captains – a person whose role is primarily to drive and ensure the safety of the passengers in his bus. How does that role then get taken over productively by an autonomous vehicle, by artificial intelligence and how do we then make sure that these bus captains has a useful, productive, important, engaging job?

14.    There are some models we need to think about. The Skills Framework is part of that, but we also have some examples in the rest of our economy where this has already started to happen. And it shows that it can be done in a way that makes sure that the job is preserved, the opportunity for the worker is preserved, safety is maintained and the economic value is derived. Look at what’s happening at our ports. PSA has deployed automated cranes at Pasir Panjang Terminal for a few years. It has deployed a number of autonomous and electronic systems for many different job roles, and, in the process, has retrained many workers, retrained employees to play a different role in their control systems where maybe 70 to 80 per cent of a job or task is taken over by electronic and automated systems. When something goes wrong, when there is an issue about which system has priority, and which process needs to take precedence, needs to be prioritised – the job is handed over to a human, the “human-in-the-loop” process.

15.    But that has required their workers to undergo significant retraining, and that has been provided, as a result of which, the jobs are there. That type of transitional, incremental, development approach, how do we look at the workers that are employed in these roles today, and make sure that they continue to play an important role as we slowly improve upon our processes, as we slowly use the technology that is available to make our systems safer and better, and deliver on the economic value. This is the approach that we will take in land transport as we have done for many other sectors.

16.    We foresee that we will need a person in the loop for autonomous vehicles for the foreseeable future. It is not easy to drive any vehicle, whether a bus or a car or a taxi, on a road which is occupied also by human-driven vehicles. So having a human-in-the-loop of any autonomous, artificially-driven vehicles will be an important component for a long time to come. But these are unknowns. We don’t know how the technology and the space will develop and we need a way to make sure that we keep everybody together, both in terms of the vision that we have, the language that we develop around skills frameworks, opportunities and challenges. The Skills Framework that we are launching today is one very good example of how we take that model of tripartism and develop a common ground.

17.    The opportunity to do so and the process of doing so depends upon a particular type of relationship between the various players. Here in Singapore, we have this model of tripartism that I think is very valued and very valuable. It requires a certain humility as well as a certain engagement between all the different partners. The employers need to understand that unions, workers and training providers play very important roles to advocate on behalf of the worker. The unions and the training providers need to understand the important roles that businesses and employers have in driving innovation and transformation, and making sure economic opportunities are available to workers and Singaporeans for the foreseeable future. The training providers have to have a certain humility to recognise the roles that both workers and employers play in making sure that the training is industry-relevant and market-relevant, and is continually refreshed. So there needs to be humility and engagement all round. Of course, the Government needs to understand very importantly that the best answers and the best solutions don’t necessarily reside within your policy papers or the statements that you make, but in the relationship that you develop between the unions, workers, employers and training providers.

18.    Humility – we also need a robust system of engagement between all of these players and partners. And that robust engagement needs to come out with a tangible product that people believe in, such as training courses, a skills framework, and ultimately, good jobs for our workers and our partners. The next immediate challenge is going to be implementation. You can develop a skills framework but you need to implement it and it needs to become real. I look forward to a continuing relationship with the unions, represented today by the National Transport Workers’ Union, for their contribution to the Skills Framework for Public Transport, our public transport operators, and of course, LTA and other public sector agencies.

19.    Thank you all very much for your contributions to this piece important of work. I look forward to making it happen and transforming our public transport sector over the next few years.