SINGAPORE employers have been urged to introduce more flexible work hours to promote better family life for workers and ostensibly help the country turn a declining birth rate into a baby boom.

The high number of unmarried women and the small families of those who are married were "grave problems," Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong said this week in his National Day address, prompting Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong to seek the help of private sector employers.

Some ministries and statutory bodies were already doing their bit -- giving staff an alternate Saturday off or a half-day off every other week, Lee was reported saying in the Straits Times today.

He said that through incentives and getting people to have balanced lives, Singaporeans would be encouraged to have more babies and have them earlier.

An inter-ministry committee has been formed to draw up a strategy to boost the birth rate which has fallen below 1.5 children per woman, well down on the 2.1 figure deemed necessary to replace the population.

A 1987 Singapore population policy encouraged families to have three or more babies.

Lee said the government had been picking up on suggestions from Mrs Yu-Foo Yee Shoon, the senior parliamentary secretary to the community development and sports ministry, who has championed the cause of more family-friendly practices in the workplace.

Singapore Health Minister Lim Hng Kiang last month called on Singaporeans to start raising a family early, saying the "rapid decline in fertility rates coupled with the aging population places new strains on our society."

An opinion poll in April favoured compulsory paternity leave of at least seven days as a means to encourage women to get pregnant.

Lim said that while surveys show many Singaporeans want to get married and have children, the pressures of career and socio-economic advancement forced them to put raising a family on the backburner.

He cited a 1996 study which showed that single Singaporeans ranked marriage and parenthood only 5th and 6th in their order of priorities in the next five years after career, finance, housing and education.

The median age for marriage has increased to 27 years for women and 29 years for men. The median age for first birth for mothers rose from 27.7 years in 1990 to 28.5 years in 1998, he said.