Do they offer the salary following this age table? Look under "EP qualifying salary (Stage 1)"

https://www.mom.gov.sg/passes-and-permits/e...alifying-salary

for malaysian it is much lower, i have a friend that is in 3k+ range also get her EP recently. around 2-3 years ago the EP threshold is also starting from 5k, me and my wife during that time not in that range yet but we still got our EP 2-3 years ago.

i think employer will always try for ep first when applying it for msian (provided if you have degree), else spass/ work permit they got to pay 300-800 for the worker levy every month and they also need to fulfil the quota requirement.

end up they either employ local/pr and pay the 17% cpf or they pay for the levy. if they could employ local/pr to work for them i dont think they will want to employ spass/work permit worker as it is not much cheaper and the hassle to employ 1 (you need to provide banker guarantee to MOM also to employ non msian to work under work permit)
I believe that even for short term, it's still worth applying for PR. You never know when your EP might fail to get renewed and they got no more quota to employ u under the Spass.

The CPF contributions both 17% & 20% can be withdrawn when you give up your PR and this will be a very significant amount when u do that.

i straight away ask my hr to contribute full 17% and 20% CPF the moment i got my PR