Singapore’s largest telco said on Monday that it will be implementing a wage freeze for all employees except for operational and support staff. In a note to employees, CEO Chua Sock Koong pointed to ongoing weak business sentiment and the Covid-19 outbreak, which worsened over the weekend as the city-state discovered yet another cluster of cases, as major risk factors which have prompted the company to look at cost-cutting measures.

She said: “During this period, we need to strengthen our financial resilience and take out more costs. Times like these require us to tighten our belts, both as a company and as workers, to ensure the long-term competitiveness of our business.”

SingTel has not been doing well recently, with its profits falling by 21 percent in 2019. Last year, in fact, Chua took a 50 percent pay cut amidst a downsizing move that saw the telco cutting almost 2,000 jobs, and in the company's annual report, chairman Simon Israel called market conditions last year a “perfect storm”, with intensifying competition, economic uncertainty, and unfavorable currency shifts affecting the company’s business not just locally but around the region. This year, however, SingTel has said that it does not plan to downsize.

SingTel is only the latest in a string of large Singapore employers that are cutting costs by tackling management salaries while attempting to preserve the livelihoods of operational staff, likely in response to the government’s firm stance that saving jobs is a priority. Last month, property developer CapitaLand froze the pay of its managerial and senior staff, and ground services provider SATS has already twice cut the salaries of its management team. Even Temasek Holdings, the state investment giant, has frozen pay for all its employees and is giving its senior management team the option to take a cut to their base salaries.