HEALTHCARE MANPOWER DEMAND

NOTICE PAPER NO. 556

NOTICE OF QUESTION FOR ORAL ANSWER

FOR THE SITTING OF PARLIAMENT ON 3 MARCH 2026

Name and Constituency of Member of Parliament

Dr Choo Pei Ling

MP for Chua Chu Kang GRC

Question No. 1623

To ask the Coordinating Minister for Social Policies and Minister for Health in light of global competition and rising domestic demand for healthcare manpower (a) how Singapore is strengthening long-term workforce sustainability while maintaining care standards; and (b) whether workforce planning assumptions are being reviewed to ensure resilience amid tightening regional labour markets.

Answer

1        Ensuring an adequate healthcare workforce to meet rising healthcare demand is a foremost priority for the Ministry.  We adopt a multi-pronged workforce strategy to ensure sufficient healthcare manpower while maintaining care standards, and regularly update our plans as circumstances change.

2        Our focus continues to be to build up the local core of our healthcare workforce, through diversifying training pathways, increasing local intakes for healthcare programmes and ensuring that job roles are attractive and salaries are competitive.  We bring in qualified foreign healthcare workers in areas of shortfall. And to ensure resilience, we diversify the sources of foreign recruitment, and secure Government-to-Government bilateral manpower cooperation agreements with regional countries.

3        We will continue to invest in good preventive health, and right-site patients to appropriate care settings to keep our healthcare system sustainable.