Fair Helps 2,000 Needy Find Jobs

Monday, Oct. 19, 2009 Posted: 2:03:12AM HKT

Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong gracing the Hope Fair on Saturday at Paya Lebar Methodist Church. Mr Goh is pictured here stopping by an employer's job booth in the middle of a tour. (Photo: CP)

A job fair held Saturday at Paya Lebar Methodist Church hosted some 2,000 needy people.

Organised by English-speaking Methodist churches to help the community at large, the Hope Fair offered practical guidance in job-hunting, how one should prepare for job interviews and other forms of professional counselling.

There were also some 1,500 jobs on offer by 26 employers at the full-day fair.

“It is noteworthy that the key purpose of the fair is not to provide fish for the people, but to help them learn to fish or if they already know how to fish, to help them mend their nets, or point them to better ways of catching fish,” noted Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong, delivering an opening speech as the Guest-of-Honour at the event.

Rising unemployment, rather than plunging growth rates, has been the ‘most worrisome fear’ of the government, Mr Goh explained.

But there is an important human dimension to the problem, such as the shock and anguish of losing one’s job, the anxiety and frustration of looking for another, the new skills to be learned and adjustments to be made, and the financial and psychological impact on the family.

With this in mind, the government has been attempting to provide job seekers with not just financial and social assistance; but retraining and preparing them so they are ‘job-ready’. So far, the CDCs and Employment and Employability Institute (e2i) have helped over 23,500 Singaporeans find jobs.

SM Goh commended the Methodist Church for being a part of the government’s overall effort to help people find employment, calling the Hope Fair a ‘refreshing’ and ‘welcome’ initiative from the Christian community in his introduction.

Mr Goh, who is MP in Marine Parade GRC, also scored the mainstream Protestant Church for helping all Singaporeans, regardless of race or religion.

He gave examples of how other religions have been helping the wider community.

The Al-Iman Mosque Welfare Committee has been collaborating with North West CDC and Bukit Panjang Citizens’ Consultative Committee since 2006 to run the Community Kitchen, which equips the long-term unemployed with skills to prepare pastries for small-scale retail and catering purposes.

Another example is the Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple which recently announced that it would sponsor the cost of building, equipping and operating the National Kidney Foundation’s 25th dialysis centre.

Other examples include the Singapore Buddhist Lodge, which has been serving free vegetarian meals at its premises for some 20 years, and the Sri Sivan Temple, which provides food supplies to needy families through the MacPherson Community Club.

Religious organisations have also joined hands to do good together. The Singapore Buddhist Lodge, Jamiyah Singapore, the Hindu Endowments Board and the Taoist Federation teamed up to distribute more than $400,000 in education bursaries to needy students earlier this year. Recipients were of different races and religions, including Buddhists, Christians, Hindus and Muslims.

The Saturday Hope Fair was the last and the largest in a series of three job fairs organised this year by the Trinity Annual Conference of The Methodist Church in Singapore.

Edmond Chua
edmond@christianpost.com