Singapore requires employers to consider Singaporean fairly when hiring skilled professional foreigners, the city-state's Ministry of Manpower announced its new Fair Consideration Framework on Monday.

Under the framework, firms applying for new Employment Passes ( EP), work passes mainly distributed to skilled professional foreigners, must first advertise the job vacancy on a new jobs bank administered by the Singapore Workforce Development Agency.

The ministry said the advertisement must be open to Singaporeans and run for at least 14 days. Only after that period can the company apply for an EP to bring in a foreign national.

The ministry also said it will, together with other government agencies, identify firms that may have scope to improve their hiring and career development practices.

If a firm has a disproportionately low concentration of Singaporeans at the Professionals, Managers and Executives (PME) level compared to others in their industry or have been the targets for repeated complaints of nationality-based or other discriminatory human resource practices, the ministry will ask the firm to provide additional information, including organization charts with nationality information, recruitment processes, etc.

Besides, effective from next January, the qualifying monthly salary for new EP applications will be raised from 3,000 Singapore dollars (2,398 US dollars)to 3,300 Singapore dollars (2,638 US dollars).

Tan Chuan-Jin, acting minister for manpower, said the government is "to put in place measures to nudge employers to give Singaporeans, especially our young graduates and PMEs, a fair chance at both job and development opportunities."

"The framework is not about 'Hire Singaporeans First, or Hire Singaporeans Only.' What the government is doing is to help them get a fair opportunity," Tan said.

"Singaporeans must still prove themselves able and competitive to take on the higher jobs that they aspire to. We will continue investing in our continuing education and training infrastructure so that Singaporeans can upgrade their skills and remain competitive in the workplace," he added.