In good company, to pursue gold

SINGAPORE - More than 1,000 national athletes carded by the Singapore Sports Institute will benefit from flexi-work and education schemes launched on Tuesday.

The Sports Excellence Education Scheme and the Sports Excellence Career Scheme will have arrangements for national athletes, ranging from job sharing to alternatives for school exams.

Schools and firms can also extend the schemes to other athletes as well.

Seven companies - Adecco, Charles & Keith, KPMG, MOH Holdings, MSIG Insurance, Resorts World Sentosa and StarHub - have signed up for the career scheme and will form the Sports Excellence Business Network for Athletes.

Six institutions of higher learning - Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Management University, Republic Polytechnic, ITE College East, ITE College Central and ITE College West - are in the education scheme.

Companies in the career scheme can tap on the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Talent Programme. It is a Spring Singapore initiative that attempts to attract Institute of Technical Education (ITE) and polytechnic students to SMEs via study grants and job opportunities.

Under this programme, SMEs can get up to 70 per cent in funding support for a student's school fees, study allowance and signing-on bonus.

Spring Singapore will also give participating SMEs a grant to train a student who joins the company full-time after graduation.

The two new initiatives are only for athletes who are preparing and competing at the four major Games - South-east Asia Games, Commonwealth and Asian Games, and the Olympics - and the world championships.

The athletes will still have to fulfil criteria such as minimum admission and job requirements, as well as to compete for the organisation in sports competitions if schedules permit.

Singapore Sports Council chief executive officer Lim Teck Yin said: "It is extremely important that we don't just think of them as athletes who perform in the sporting arena, but as role models for future generations."

Providing flexible schemes for athletes

Companies

• Adecco
• Charles & Keith
• KPMG
• MOH Holdings
• MSIG Insurance
• Resorts World Sentosa
• StarHub

Educational institutions

• NTU
• SMU
• Republic Poly
• ITE College East
• ITE College West
• ITE College Central

Get The New Paper for more stories.