SINGAPORE – Mr Venkatasamy Balamurugan, 54, and his 24-year-old son, Mr Balamurugan Alagarsamy, are taking their second diploma together in a bid to advance in their shared field of electrical work.
Since October 2024, father and son have been attending night classes at Singapore Polytechnic three times a week. Their part-time diploma course in power engineering ends in 2027, after which they both plan to take professional assessments to advance as a Licensed Electrical Worker (LEW).
In Singapore, LEWs, estimated to number around 3,700, are authorised to carry out, supervise or certify electrical work.
They both earned their first diploma in electrical and electronic engineering – decades apart from each other – in India’s Tamil Nadu state, where they used to live. Mr Alagarsamy, a technical officer at SMRT who works in power maintenance, is a Singapore citizen, while his parents are permanent residents here.
Mr Balamurugan is an electrical supervisor at Sengkang General Hospital while his wife, aged 40, works as a cashier at a convenience store. Their younger son, 22, is reading computer science at a university in India.
