Parliamentary QA
Number of Health Attendants and Median Salary
24 February 2021
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Name and Constituency of Member of Parliament
Dr Tan Wu Meng
MP for Jurong GRC
Question No. 487
To ask the Minister for Health at public healthcare institutions in each year from 2010 to 2020 (a) how many healthcare attendants were deployed; (b) what proportion were (i) direct hires and (ii) outsourced respectively; and (c) what is the median salary for the direct hires and outsourced workers respectively.
Written Answer
1. There were around 1,820 health attendants working in the public healthcare institutions1 as at end 2020. Of these, about 1,050 were outsourced workers. Overall, the number of direct hires for health attendants had decreased from approximately 850 in 2013 to 770 in 2020 and their average monthly salaries had risen by 21% from $1,520 in 2013 to $1,840 in 2020 (see Table 1 for details).
Table 1: Overall number of FTE for directly hired health attendants and average monthly base salary for local direct hires (2013 to 2020)
Table caption
2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Number of Staff2 | 850 | 820 | 770 | 870 | 700 | 750 | 800 | 770 |
Average monthly base salary3 (Local staff only) | $1,520 | $1,570 | $1,590 | $1,680 | $1,730 | $1,780 | $1,800 | $1,840 |
2. Due to changes in data definition, we are only able to ascertain the number of direct hires and their salaries from 2013 onwards. The public healthcare institutions only have information on the number of outsourced workers deployed as at end 2020 since this is recent. They do not have data on the salaries of outsourced workers who are employed by third-party contractors. Nonetheless, the third-party contractors engaged by our public healthcare institutions are required to abide by the Tripartite Guidelines for Fair Employment Practices to ensure that their staff are remunerated fairly according to the terms and conditions as stated under the Employment Act.
1 Includes acute hospitals, specialty and medical centres, as well as polyclinics.
2 Data in terms of Full-Time Equivalents rounded to the nearest 10, based on submissions from the public healthcare institutions as of end December each year.
3 The monthly base salaries exclude the annual wage supplement, bonuses and also variable allowances payable to the staff. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10 dollars.