No takers for dishwashing job until restaurant offers S$3,500 salary

A Japanese restaurant in Singapore resorted to offering a salary of 3,500 Singapore dollars to hire a person to wash the dishes.

The Food and Beverage industry is doing well in the country. However, the people of Singapore are not willing to apply for the position.

People from outside the country work as dishwashers in restaurants and hotels.

There are two reasons for this. The first is that Malaysian citizens returned to their country due to the coronavirus pandemic. Second, government policy is too strict on foreign worker policies.

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The owner of the restaurant stated that they hadn’t had any candidates for quite some time. He added that they had to offer a salary of S,500 (Rs 509,530).

Andrew Tjioe, CEO and Chairman of the TungLok Group, said they had outsourced their cleaning work to an outside provider a decade ago. They charge around S,800 (Rs 553,204) to S,000 (Rs 582,320) for a dishwasher that runs eight hours a day.

He added that the vendor provides them with labor and they don’t care if he will show up for work or not.

Another owner said her supplier recently increased her rates by 27 percent to try to hire dishwashers herself.

She offers a basic salary of Rs 2,600 (Rs 378,508) and a starting bonus of Rs 2,600 (Rs 291,160). She introduced a monthly performance bonus of up to Rs S$1,000 (Rs 145,580) to retain her employees.