The Ministry of Manpower has penalise five employers for their age-based job advertisements.

The adverts discriminated against candidates because of their age, or showed a preference for a particular age group.

Ministry of Manpower

The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) is the body responsible for labour market enforcement in Singapore.

It has, with immediate effect, banned five employers renewing the work passes of their existing foreign employees for 12 months and from hiring any new foreign employees.

Thes five employers are the first to be hit by a stiffer penalties framework which came into force in January.

One of the employers affected, a company called Wisdomtree, had advertised for a senior Chinese teacher, and stated its preference for candidates younger than 30 years old. The Ministry of Manpower found that this was because the centre wanted "energetic" teachers, but said that Wisdomtree should have hired based on merit. This would involve the assessing candidate's ability to connect with students, rather than assuming that an older candidate would not be able to. The Minstry of Manpower said all candidates, regardless of age, should be given a fair opportunity.

Complaints submitted to Ministry of Manpower

Age discrimination complaints are the most common type of discrimination complaint, but all have fallen since 2016
“We must continue our efforts to weed out employers who persist in discriminatory practices... When employers hire fairly, they can access a wider talent pool and ensure the best available person gets the job.”
— Ms Christine Loh, director of employment standards enforcement at MOM's labour relations and workplaces division

Age discrimination in Singapore

This new action by the Ministry of Manpower comes after a month after a survey on ageism in the workplace in Singapore shed some light on the experiences of older workers.

The Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware) interviewed a number of older women who were family caregivers. The women interviewed were aged between 45 and 65 years old. They reported experiencing negative changes to their employment status once they became caregivers to their older family members.

At the time of the interviews, only five out of 22 were in full-time employment.

Some of those interviewed said that they had direct experience of age discrimination. This included being dismissed by interviewers because they were visibly old and being ignored at job fairs by recruiters.

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