SINGAPORE Singapore is paying the price of rising costs, with a trade union report showing more than 42,000 jobs have disappeared in the past five years as companies move away because of cheaper labor elsewhere in Asia.

The trade union report has again brought calls for wage cuts to allow Singapore to remain competitive and keep jobs, AFP reported.

A total of 42,464 workers were retrenched between 1997 and May 31 this year, the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) said in its weekly newsletter.

"These jobs will not come back. They have gone to China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand where land and labor costs are lower," said the report headlined "Going, Going, Gone: Companies Relocate to Lower-Cost Countries".

"The casualty rates over such a prolonged period clearly spells out the harsh reality for workers -- these types of jobs are leaving Singapore and they are not returning." NTUC Secretary General Lim Boon Heng, who is also a cabinet minister with responsibility for the Prime Minister's Office, told the ****Straits Times**** Monday the only way to stem job losses was to lower wage costs.

"A worker in Singapore will cost 1,000 dollars ($560) per month or more, but there is a bountiful stream of workers in China who will gladly work for 100 dollars per month," he said.

"Once the factories relocate, these jobs are gone.

That is why we should lower our wage costs, to slow down the pace of relocation, keep the jobs for as long as we can." Earlier this month, prominent Singapore economist Tan Khee Giap, a member of a state-sponsored Economic Review Committee, recommended a three-year wage freeze as one measure towards improving the island's competitiveness.

Collating data from 18 companies that conducted large retrenchments in the past five years, NTUC said the majority cited "business restructuring, high operating and labor costs, and the economic downturn" for lay off.

Eight companies closed their operating in Singapore completely, while the others relocated part or all of their production facilities.

The problem of lay-off in the electronics and electrical industries has been especially acute, accounting for 23,700 of the people thrown out of work, said the report, which did not include non-union job losses.

The disk drive sector was the hardest hit. Three companies -- Maxtor Peripherals, Seagate Technology and Western Digital -- shed a total of 9,000 workers, or 21 percent of the total retrenchments.

Other large lay-off were reported among companies making domestic appliances, computer and information-technology equipment.

The report said China has become the favorite destination for relocation, followed by Indonesia, particularly Batam Island which is just a 40 minute ferry ride from Singapore, next-door neighbor Malaysia and Thailand.

In a report last week, the Ministry of Manpower put unemployment at 4.4 percent -- a seasonally adjusted 85,600 jobs -- and projected it would continue to rise this year despite signs of an improving economy.