MADAM Linda Chan has been out of work for the past two years as she could not find a suitable job.

Her key consideration: her workplace must be close to her four-room flat in Taman Jurong, so that she still has time to do household chores when she gets home from work.

After attending a women-only job fair, the mother of three school-going children is now much closer, literally, to securing her ideal job.

The '30 minutes to work' job fair, held on Friday at the Jurong Entertainment Centre at Jurong East, offered non-working women an array of jobs all located within the Jurong neighbourhood.

Such jobs, which were offered by around 30 organisations present at the fair, ranged from bus drivers to sales promoters and telemarketers.

Madam Chan said she applied for six different positions, but hopes to become a cashier at a McDonalds outlet near her block so that 'my children can pop by anytime.'

The Jurong event, organised by a national workgroup looking to draw women back into the workforce, was the first in a series of similar job fairs to be held across the country.

Explaining the rationale for the fair's theme, NTUC deputy secretary-general Halimah Yacob, who heads the committee comprising of government officials, unionists and employers, said many women who remain at home cited excessive commuting time as one key reason for shying away from work.

'Their concern is that too much travelling time will eat into their family time,' the MP for Jurong GRC told reporters on Friday. Hence, there is a need to provide them jobs near their homes, she added.

Many of the employers present at the fair, which was attended by more than 1,000 women, also offered jobs with part-time or flexible working arrangements - another attractive option for women.

One example is transport operator SMRT Corporation, which hopes that women can fill such jobs as customer service assistants and bus drivers on four-hour shifts.

'We believe that women form a big untapped workforce in the country,'

'It's for employers like us to redefine the working arrangements...to attract more women to re-enter the workforce,' said Mr Tommy Ng, a senior vice-president of corporate services at SMRT.

According to latest statistics from the Ministry of Manpower, there are about 100,000 economically inactive women who have indicated an interest in returning to the workforce.

The committee hopes to coax around 2,000 such women to return to the workforce by the end of next year.

Besides holding job fairs for women, Madam Halimah also plans to get companies into the act, by coming out with case studies of those with effective flexible work arrangements in place.