Written Answer to PQ on More flexible grace period before impact to foreign worker quota

NOTICE PAPER NO. 1128 OF 2026 FOR THE SITTING ON OR AFTER 10 SEPTEMBER 2026
QUESTION NO. 1898 FOR WRITTEN ANSWER

MP: Mr Shawn Loh

To ask the Acting Minister for Manpower whether the Ministry has considered providing more flexible grace periods for companies to replace local employees who voluntarily leave a company, before the companies’ foreign worker quotas are impacted, to reduce the potentially compounding impact of such labour disruptions.

Answer:

The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) calculates a company’s foreign worker quota based on the latest three-month average number of local employees in the company. This is intentionally done to smoothen the impact of changes in the company’s local workforce numbers and provide a degree of stability for its foreign worker quota.

2. A company can approach MOM to request for flexibility in computing foreign worker quota based on the number of local employees in the latest month once they hire a replacement local employee. MOM will assess this based on supporting documents submitted, such as employment contract and CPF contribution of the replacement employee.