EP rejection and appeals

Hi seeking advice for an EP rejection.

I own a company with 3 local staff, one PR and One on EP.

I have tried applying for a foreigner end of Jan 2021- rejected within 10days saying that salary doesn't commensurate with experience. This is after using the SAT tool. I called MOM and explained the situation and they proceeded to ask me to appeal.

The appeal went thru and the next step was to send applicants documents to to MOH ( required to go through as we run a health care clinic).
MOM came back to us within 2 days to say it has been rejected. Citing MOH not approving.
This particular candidate has 3 years' experience and is from an accredited Uni, where my previous employees are from. In fact, her fellow classmate( our neighbor) is here. the only difference is nationality.

I did not appeal but re-applied as a new pass. Time of application : 26th March 2021. I used a hiring agency this time around. 3 weeks later and no news, so my hiring agency called them on a Saturday morning.

Within the following Monday, MOH again asked to resubmit documents.. which I proceeded by 22nd April , Thursday morn. Today Friday, 23rd, MOM rejected again within 2 days.

This time the reason was: Candidate is not suitable for workpass. Please find another candidate.

Difference for both. Reasons by MOM is different.

For the Second application: I did RMI verification, got more proof of work documents including income tax.

Our field ( other clinics )has been hounded by major rejections. Unsure now if its due to Covid or just because applicant is overseas.

Any advice?

Difficult to tell.
We didn't have stories from the health sector here before,which seems to have quite some specifics. (For example, I didn't know an additional MoH approval is needed there.)
Since the outcome was different, there must have been a difference between the first and second application. If the job and your submission was the same, it might be the COVID situation. In any case this is MoM's way of telling you that you should hire a local candidate instead.

Hi beppi,

Unfortunately in my line ( Chiropractic), there are no locals. There is no school here hence mainly only foreigners. A quick search on my career future shows massive amount of vacancies. In this covid situation, even the amount of application is barely there from foreigners.  Would it be worth writing in why the company need this candidate?

I don‘t know your specific field, of course, but in general it is always a good idea to submit work pass applications with a good explanation why a foreigner needs to be hired here - best if, by hiring him, more local jobs would be generated.