To transform Singapore into a Smart Nation, the infocommunications sector will continue to play a key role, said Manpower Minister Lim Swee Say on Wednesday (Jul 12). To realise this objective, there needs to be constant development of human capital in this field of business.

In his speech during an industry conference, Mr. Lim stated that the employment in the infocomm sector has increased up to 13,000 in the last five years. In the statistics, local Singaporeans are making up two-thirds of total manpower, Channel News Asia reports.

With good employment growth in the industry (4.1 percent per annum from 2011 to 2016), infocomm sector offers good job higher than other industries. With 80 percent of the jobs in the sector are geared towards professionals, managers, engineers and technicians (PMETs), infocomm workers are offered with higher median wage (30 per cent higher) than the national median.

See: S$120 million plan to grow talent pool in growing infocomm sector

As a bid to help and encourage more locals to join this sector, the Ministry has delegated the TechSkills Accelerator to step up and expand the scope of professional conversion programs. The initiative is aimed to help those who have left re-enter the sector and take on new careers, while helping those from other sectors to join it.

Given that infocomm has become smarter and more pervasive in this era of globalisation, the minister stated that there needs to be a continuous effort to build new capabilities for both local and foreign workforce. Therefore, to present Singapore as leading capability hub in the sector, Mr. Lim urged the transfer of global expertise to the local workforce to be speeding up.

Read also: Infocomm industry must look beyond traditional sources of manpower: Yaacob