As a general rule, all Singapore Employment Pass applications would require a local Employer sponsorship which is a legal entity incorporated or registered in Singapore. The local employer typically screens, selects and considers a suitable foreign candidate after all efforts to hire a local staff are exhausted. This include putting up a job advertised at the local government managed job portal known as mycareeerfuture. With this key mandatory requirement, it’s an implicit understanding and presumption that the employer has vowed for the skills and qualifications of the foreign applicant.
Another key requirement would be the salary offered as it must meet the minimum requirements based on the job roles at the point of application adjusted for age.
Since 1 September 2023, employers must also consider whether they are eligible to hire foreigners on Employment Pass based on a new COMPASS framework where diversity of foreign nationals currently employed and proportion of local employees in the company are taken into account in the assessment process.
However, in a minority of cases, the employer is a foreign entity without any legal entity in Singapore. The foreign employer can be the business partner or supplier of services or products to the local entity. The local entity cannot hire the foreign employee as the person is not their employee. However, the foreign employee is required to perform a short term role such as implementing a project. In such a situation, the local entity can act as a sponsor but does not hire the employee on their payroll. This type of application is known as Singapore Employment Pass Sponsorship Case.
A proof of a business relationship between the foreign company or employer and the local company (the client) is required. The Singapore Employer Pass sponsorship case application would also need to provide a reason why the foreign employee is required to work in Singapore.
An example of sponsorship case can be a local bank engaging the service of a foreign company to supply and deploy automated video teller machine. This requires the foreign supply who does not have any legal entity in Singapore to send their engineers to carry on implementation, commissioning and testing of the product. The bank can sponsor the foreign engineers to work in Singapore but the engineers remain the employee of the foreign supplier of the products and related services.
The application form for Singapore Employment Pass sponsorship case can be found here.
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