At the United Nations’ 2019 General Assembly, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights Philip Alston submitted a thematic report on digital technology, social protection and human rights. It was compiled from 50 reports sent in from around the world.
Transient Workers Count Too contributed a detailed report on how digitisation in Singapore, which the government promotes strongly, has knock-on effects that can undermine social protection for migrant workers, a large and vulnerable population.
When processes are digitised, members of the public will need sufficient digital literacy and appropriate devices to interact with the processes. Low-wage workers may not have the economic resources to acquire the necessary devices like scanners and computers. Nor do manual workers spend enough time with computers to acquire the necessary digital literacy. Low-wage migrant workers are further disadvantaged because many digital interfaces are in English, a foreign language with which they have low verbal fluency and even lower reading/writing skills.
Moreover, to interact with many processes, one must have an electronic identity (in Singapore, we call it the SingPass), without which you can’t even enter the digitised system. Work Permit holders are not issued SingPasses. And finally, some processes involve payment, and for that, one must have a credit card or at least a debit card. Having a bank account is still not universal for migrant workers. Even if they are keen on that, they cannot open an account unless their employer signs off on it — something required by many banks.
Our report examines six areas where digital technology has impacted foreign workers. In ascending order of seriousness of impact, they are:
TWC2 made our submission to the Special Rapporteur in April 2019. The report can be downloaded by clicking the icon on the right.owever, clicking the icon at right will also download the PDF document in full.
The report is also available from the online list maintained by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). but because we submitted it via our regional network Migrant Forum Asia, it is thus listed under that name.