Andy Nelson Ng Mui Shee (right) was fined $16,000 on Monday, January 30, 2012, for four counts of false declaration of foreign workers’ salaries. This is an offence under the Employment of Foriegn Workers Act.

The assistant sales manager at an employment agency had been asked by two client companies — Sun Blues Cleaning Maintenance and TY Enterprise (both companies are located in the same premises and have a common administrative manager, Ms Thenkumari Shanmugam Packirisamy) — to bring in foreign workers as cleaner supervisors on S Passes. At the time, the minimum monthly salary to qualify for an S Pass was $1,800.

However, when the companies’ quota for S Passes were exhausted, Ng arranged to get the rest into Singapore on Employment Passes, for which the minimum monthly salary was then $2,500. (Currently the minimum salaries for S Pass and Employment Pass holders are $2,000 and $2,800 respectively.)  At least 27 Chinese national workers were hired by the two companies through Ng.

In fact, the workers were only paid $900 a month.

The Straits Times reported January 31, 2012,  that Ng had known that the four workers would be paid only $900 each for the entire duration of their employment with the companies, but between March 29 and June 9, 2010, had helped fill up the application forms falsely declaring their wages anyway. Another 23 charges were taken into consideration at sentencing.

The news report did not mention whether Sun Blues and TY Enterprise would also be prosecuted.