Harun holds his payslip which had a basic salary below what was on his IPA and overtime wages at same rate as basic (illegal)

In a survey conducted in August 2018, TWC2 found that 22.5% of workers interviewed were still not being issued monthly pay slips by their employers, in contravention of the Employment Act.

Payslips were made mandatory in April 2016. We conducted a survey in the middle of that year to establish a baseline, and found that 33.2% of workers did not receive payslips (also known as salary slips). The earlier study can be seen at One in three foreign workers still not getting itemised payslips. Two years on, in 2018, we repeated the research exercise and found only a small improvement to 22.5%. Disappointingly, pay slips had not become universal practice.

Further questions in our survey indicated that even when employers issued pay slips, they could be deficient in detail, thus failing to meet the transparency standards intended by law. For example, a minority of workers reported that total hours or overtime hours were not stated or overtime wages not detailed.

A new question in our survey (new in the sense that a comparable question was not asked in 2016) revealed that about 4.5% of employers paid less than what was stated on pay slips.

This study also indicated that there has been no improvement in the ratio of workers paid by bank, versus by cash. One third of respondents were still being paid in cash — a mode of payment that is associated with salary underpayment and disputes.

The study had 357 respondents, all of whom were South Asian men on Work Permits, mostly in the construction sector. They were interviewed on two Sundays in August 2018.

The report (PDF, 10 pages) can be downloaded by clicking the icon at right.