S’pore Employers Must Verify Employment Pass Applicants’ Educational Qualifications From 1 Sep

Stricter Verification Process For Employment Pass Applicants

From 1 Sep, employers in Singapore must verify candidates’ educational qualifications before hiring them under the Employment Pass (EP). This is to ensure that the qualifications of potential hires are authentic.

Minister for Manpower Dr Tan See Leng announced this in Parliament on Wednesday (1 Mar).

This comes after authorities detected several cases of false education declarations in work pass applications in recent years.

A noteworthy case involved 23 workers who declared qualifications from Manav Bharti University in India. The institution made headlines in 2021 when it was found to have sold 36,000 fake degrees over 11 years.

After investigations, authorities permanently banned 19 people from working in Singapore, while two were jailed.

Employers required to verify higher education qualifications

According to Channel NewsAsia (CNA), the new framework will affect employers of candidates with diploma-level qualifications and above.

Starting from 1 Sep, the employers must send third-party verification proof for the applicants.

Dr Tan noted that employers are already responsible for ensuring the authenticity of applications.

With that said, the new framework will further “safeguard against gaming by submitting fraudulent educational qualifications”.

The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) reassured employers that there would be minimal disruptions to their hiring process.

Employers can use COMPASS as a guide

Elaborating on the decision, Dr Tan said the process would be implemented with MOM’s Complementarity Assessment Framework (COMPASS).

Under this framework, an EP application can gain points based on four attributes and two bonus criteria, and it needs to attain at least 40 points to pass.

The evaluation will look at the following:

• individual attributes: salary and qualifications
• firm-related attributes: diversity and support for local employment
• skills bonus: jobs with skill shortages
• strategic economic bonus: partnership with government or internationalisation activities

For example, under the ‘Qualifications’ criteria, if a candidate surpasses expectations and comes from a top-tier institution, the application will get a maximum of 20 points.

Meanwhile, a candidate with a degree-equivalent qualification will earn 10 points. A candidate does not gain any points if they do not have a degree-equivalent qualification.

MOM will release full details of this framework before April 2023.

Qualifying salary for EPs raised to S$5,000 in September 2022

According to MOM, EPs allow foreign professionals, managers and executives to work in Singapore.

The minimum qualifying salary for new applications was raised to S$5,000 a month last September. The benchmark is S$5,500 for those in the financial services sector. Renewals will be subject to the same salary requirements from 1 Sep this year.

Introduced last year, COMPASS is a new assessment framework for EP applicants, which will be effective from September 2023.

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Featured image adapted from Marcus Wong on Flickr and MCI Singapore on YouTube.