The Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said that without foreign workers, Singapore would not have attracted S$3.7 billion in wafer fab investment as well as created more jobs for Singaporeans.
According to the statistics quoted, the IM Flash Singapore Nand Flash Wafer Fab currently employs 1,200 workers, of which six in 10 are Singaporean residents: a term that covers citizens and permanent residents.
The blogsphere is abuzz with speculation that there are more PRs than S’poreans in the ratio. If it were otherwise, surely he would say so, they argue. Sumething in that, I have to admit.
Why doesn’t someone write to the company and ask for these details? Ideally our “constructive, nation-building” should do the asking on this matter of public interest?
The company may refuse to give the data, fuelling suspicions further but at least it cannot hide under the excuse that it does not have the data.
On the national level, that is the excuse. A few years ago, in answer to a parliamentary question, the then Minister of Manpower, Ng Eng Hean, said that MOM data collection methods could not distinguish between PRs and citizens, hence the use of the term “S’pore residents”.
Thoughts of a Cynical Investor 
Why in the world does a company have to answer to your queries? Refusal to answer doesn’t even need to be politically related. It can just be:
a) Don’t waste my time
b) Why should I tell you my business hiring guidelines
c) What if you are a competitor
Seriously, companies don’t have time to pander to people like you that can’t even understand that people have better things to do than answer questions from non-clients.
Well it’s like sex. Don’t ask for, don’t get it.
No harm in trying esp on matter of public interest.
Anyway obviously you don’t believe in co building gdwill.
Opps finger moved too fast.
Why the personal abuse?”don’t have time to pander to people like you that can’t even understand that people have better things to do than answer questions from non-clients.”
You in YPAP?
Someone in the government obviously has the data but is not sharing (yet). I suspect the number of true blue Singaporeans is fewer than half. Politically it does not sell. QED.
The govt has the data, but its classified secret. Only the strategic planning folks at the board I used to work at stat board were privy to that info.