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Thai fishing trade under fire for human trafficking
Desperate Cambodians, recruited into the Thai fishing fleet, have been jumping off their boats to escape life-threatening work conditions. They are often not paid either, reported Nirmal Ghosh , Straits Times’ correspondent in Thailand. The feature story (Straits Times, 24 March 2012, Thai fishing trade under fire for human trafficking) detailed that about 30 Cambodians...
Maid dies from 13-floor fall
Chinese-language newspaper Lianhe Wanbao and the Straits Times reported that a domestic worker from Indonesia fell to her death on Saturday afternoon, March 17, 2012. She fell from her employer’s home on the 13th floor of a flat in Pasir Ris Street 71. From the bamboo clothes pole found next to her, it probably happened...
Levy rise of questionable benefit, says labour economics professor
In a side panel to an article in the Straits Times story on Wednesday, March 21, 2012 (Retire on CPF savings? Think again, by Radha Basu), associate professor Hui Weng Tat cautioned about the possibility of employers attempting to recover higher levy rates by lowering foreign worker wages, and urged greater attention to raising productivity. Straits...
Underaged maid given 10 years for killing employer
Vitria Wahyuni was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment by Justice Choo Han Teck for killing her employer, Madam Sng Gek Wah, 87, on November 25, 2009. The domestic worker, then aged 16, had been in the job for only four days when she strangled the older lady after being subjected to scoldings and insults. As...
TWC2 glad that Tanjong Pagar MP has raised issue of abandoned injured workers
Transient Workers Count Too Monday, March 12, 2012 Media Release For immediate release TWC2 glad that Tanjong Pagar MP has raised issue of abandoned injured workers; invites reporters to 4th anniversary of our free meals programme The issue that Ms Indranee Rajah (PAP Tanjong Pagar) brought up in parliament, in relation to injured foreign workers...
Concrete slab falls on worker, killing him
Masud al Manum met a tragic and untimely death when a concrete slab fell on him. He was operating an excavator three or four storeys deep inside a hole in the ground when the slab, measuring 4m by 2m, fell. It occurred at the construction site of the Downtown Line’s Botanic Gardens Station, in the...
New Paper describes Bangladeshi workers as toyboys
A day after salaciously reporting the violent deaths of a domestic worker and her Bangladeshi lover in a short-time hotel room, the New Paper carried a feature about Bangladeshi men as toy boys sought out by Singaporean women. In a story dated March 7, 2012 (Toyboy targets, by Shaffiq Alkhatib, Amanda Phua and Amanda Yong),...
Britain's Guardian newspaper carries TWC2 remarks about new weekly day-off rule
The Guardian newspaper carried news of the Singapore government’s decision to make a weekly day off for domestic workers mandatory (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/06/singapore-maids-one-day-off-a-week). Describing the existing situation, reporter Kate Hodal wrote: Seven-day weeks and 14-hour days are common, a report last year found, with only 12% of domestic helpers currently getting a day off each week. Runaways,...
Indranee Rajah takes Manpower ministry to task — audio and transcript
At the parliamentary sitting of Monday, March 5, 2012, the member for the Silat precinct of Tanjong Pagar group representation constituency, Indranee Rajah, spoke of what she recently discovered about the situation injured foreign workers found themselves in. Residents had complained about the large numbers of foreign workers in their area. The People’s Action Party...
Indranee Rajah takes Manpower ministry to task — comment
At last, somebody within the ruling party has noticed a problem that Transient Workers Count Too have known about for years, and tried to bring to the Manpower ministry’s attention repeatedly: there are plenty of injured workers in Singapore heartlessly abandoned by the system. Indranee Rajah, the People’s Action Party member of parliament for Tanjong...
