One of the great advantages of running a tight ship is that you have the authority and control to allow the crew to let their hair down from time to time. Singapore, a strongly regulated island whose citizens know that the penalties for wrong-doing will be rigorously applied, has recently relaxed its visa entry requirements to highly sought-after IT staff, according to Peter Udall, manager of Relational Designers Limited (RDL)'s Hong Kong office.
Such is the demand in Singapore for people with knowledge of package solutions and enterprise resource planning, for example, that the immigration authorities are relaxing normal visa requirements to allow those specialists into the country. Real demand is for systems' integrators and RDL is currently recruiting widely to provide our neighbour with the technicians it needs.
Indeed, there is a growing IT skills' crisis in Asia generally even though Cisco and other technology companies are shedding thousands of jobs. Experts predict that there will be a crippling skills' shortage which India's Prime Minister thinks can be prevented by training and using technicians from impoverished Asian countries. This may be the way forward; at the moment our concern is to get people from where we can into where they are needed.
Mike_Bettsworth@compuserve.com
Tough Singapore relaxes its entry regulations - 04/2001
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