A joint statement by Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2) and Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (HOME)
29 June 2020:
Response to Post-Circuit Breaker* Amendments to the Employment of Foreign Manpower (Work Passes) Regulations
TWC2 and HOME are deeply concerned by certain of the latest amendments to the Employment of Foreign Manpower (Work Passes) Regulations, effective 2 June 2020. These appear to empower, indeed require, employers, to confine migrant workers in their accommodation. These regulations apply to Work Permit and S Pass holders, in all premises housing seven or more workers.
Employers’ discretion to “consent”
Workers may only leave their accommodation with employers’ “consent”. This is the most disturbing aspect of these amendments. Even if restrictions which discriminate against migrant workers could be rationalized as public health measures, it cannot be justifiable for workers’ freedom of movement to be put in the hands of employers, who “may grant or refuse consent”.
Practically, these regulations appear to give employers almost unfettered power over workers’ movement. Workers are left with no immediate recourse under the law. Even if they call for police help, the regulations lack clear objective criteria for first responders to evaluate and override employers’ views. Employers’ view of “emergency help” may be significantly narrower than workers’ actual needs, for example. Yet there are no checks on employers’ discretion to determine these needs.
We are helping several workers whose employment was terminated when they claimed unpaid wages. Now after the circuit breaker, they are looking for new jobs. Others need advice and help for their ongoing cases. Confinement in their accommodation has made what are already costly and onerous processes for migrant workers even more difficult. This regulation offers no scope for workers to leave their accommodation to seek redress, case advice or new jobs.
Temporary measures?
The new regulations are not time-limited, or pegged, for example, to the COVID-19 (Temporary Measures) (Control Order) Regulations’ effective period. Enacting them within the Employment of Foreign Manpower Regulations — a keystone of the Work Pass legislative regime — symptomises their discriminatory and prejudicial nature.
The new regulations also adjure workers to “keep [the] living space…clean and tidy” as part of the work pass conditions. That is, slovenly habits could lead to penalties as severe as revocation of their work pass. While everyone should fairly take proportionate responsibility for clean living space, work permit conditions are not the appropriate means to enforce this. The main factors of the spread of Covid-19 among the workers were their overcrowded living, working and transportation conditions — not conditions of their own making.
Under this approach, migrant workers are not included in the community’s mutually responsible collective effort against Covid-19. Rather, migrant workers become a problem to be fixed, by coercion if necessary, regardless of their rights or personal agency.
TWC2 and HOME support robust measures to protect everyone in Singapore, including migrant workers, from Covid-19. But a blanket legislative sledgehammer to Work Permit and S Pass holders as a demographic, regardless of individual exposure or infection risk, cannot be justified by public health concerns.
Migrant workers are part of our community. Just like all of us, they want to stay healthy to provide for their families; they want to be socially responsible. This public health crisis unleashed forces that swept hundreds of thousands of them into situations beyond anyone’s control. As Singapore eases back the past two months’ restrictions, the draconian measures to contain and control Covid-19 among migrant workers should likewise be minimized — not entrenched in even more sweeping and harsh laws.
* “Circuit Breaker” is the term used by the Singapore government for the lockdown imposed at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in Singapore.
Extract reproduced from: Employment of Foreign Manpower (Work Passes) Regulations | Fourth Schedule, Part III
(Part III is titled “Conditions to be complied with by Employer of foreign employee who is not a domestic worker, who is issued with Work Permit”)
Accommodation in unregulated dormitories
2A.—(1) Without limiting paragraph 2, where the employer provides accommodation to the foreign employee in an unregulated dormitory that the employer operates or rents from another, the employer must have, or rent an unregulated dormitory the operation of which involves, appropriate policies, procedures and controls that conform to requirements by or under the COVID-19 (Temporary Measures) (Control Order) Regulations 2020 (G.N. No. S 254/2020) and the Foreign Employee Dormitories Act 2015 (Act 3 of 2015) on the operation of dormitories.
(2) In this paragraph and paragraphs 2B, 2C and 2D —
“boarding premises” has the meaning given by section 2(1) of the Foreign Employee Dormitories Act 2015;
“licensed dormitory” means any boarding premises that is the subject of a licence under the Foreign Employee Dormitories Act 2015;
“resident”, in relation to an unregulated dormitory or a licensed dormitory, means any individual, who occupies or enjoys a right to occupy one or more beds or rooms, or spaces within a room, in the dormitory as the individual’s main or only residence in Singapore;
“unregulated dormitory” means boarding premises providing accommodation to 7 or more foreign employees and includes any place converted (temporarily or otherwise) for use as accommodation for 7 or more foreign employees, but excludes —
(a) any boarding premises to which the Foreign Employee Dormitories Act 2015 applies; and
(b) an isolation area within the meaning of section 17 of the Infectious Diseases Act (Cap. 137).
[S 427/2020 wef 02/06/2020]
Provision of food and daily supplies
2B. The employer must ensure that a foreign employee has access to food and daily supplies when the foreign employee is a resident of an unregulated dormitory or a licensed dormitory.
[S 427/2020 wef 02/06/2020]
Movement to and from dormitory, etc.
2C. The employer must not allow, or cause to be allowed, the foreign employee who is a resident of an unregulated dormitory or a licensed dormitory to leave the dormitory unless the employer is satisfied that the foreign employee —
(a) has permission from the Controller to do so; or
(b) is seeking medical treatment or help in an emergency, or is required by lawful authority to evacuate the dormitory,
and may grant or refuse consent to the foreign employee to leave the dormitory for this purpose.
[S 427/2020 wef 02/06/2020]
Extract reproduced from: Employment of Foreign Manpower (Work Passes) Regulations | Fourth Schedule, Part VI
(Part VI is titled “Conditions to be complied with by Foreign Employee issued with Work Permit”)
Movement to and from dormitory, etc.
9.—(1) If the foreign employee is a resident of an unregulated dormitory or a licensed dormitory, the foreign employee must not leave the dormitory unless the foreign employee —
(a) has prior permission from the Controller to do so, and the prior consent of the employer under paragraph 2C of Part III; or
(b) is seeking medical treatment or help in an emergency, or is required by lawful authority to evacuate the dormitory.
(2) In this paragraph and paragraphs 10 and 11 —
“boarding premises” has the meaning given by section 2(1) of the Foreign Employee Dormitories Act 2015;
“licensed dormitory” means any boarding premises that is the subject of a licence under the Foreign Employee Dormitories Act 2015;
“resident”, in relation to an unregulated dormitory or a licensed dormitory, means any individual, who occupies or enjoys a right to occupy one or more beds or rooms, or spaces within a room, in the dormitory as the individual’s main or only residence in Singapore;
“unregulated dormitory” means boarding premises providing accommodation to 7 or more foreign employees and includes any place converted (temporarily or otherwise) for use as accommodation for 7 or more foreign employees, but excludes —
(a) any boarding premises to which the Foreign Employee Dormitories Act 2015 applies; and
(b) an isolation area within the meaning of section 17 of the Infectious Diseases Act.
[S 427/2020 wef 02/06/2020]
Responsibility for personal hygiene, health, etc.
11. The foreign employee is responsible for —
(a) complying with requirements in the COVID-19 (Temporary Measures) (Control Order) Regulations 2020 on —
(i) mask-wearing when outside his place of residence (such as but not limited to when using shared facilities in an unregulated dormitory, a licensed dormitory or any other accommodation);
(ii) maintaining a distance from other individuals; and
(iii) minimising physical interactions with other individuals;
(b) keeping his living space (whether in an unregulated dormitory, a licensed dormitory or any other accommodation) clean and tidy;
(c) practising good personal hygiene and monitoring his health status in accordance with any written law, advisory, guideline or other similar instrument issued by any competent authority in relation to epidemics and prevention or control of infectious diseases;
(d) reporting to the employer, without delay, if the foreign employee is suffering from or is diagnosed with any of the following symptoms:
(i) coughing;
(ii) sneezing;
(iii) breathlessness;
(iv) a runny nose;
(v) loss of sense of smell or anosmia; and
(e) cooperating with the employer and the operator of any unregulated dormitory or licensed dormitory where the foreign employee is a resident, to enable the employer and operator to carry out their respective obligations under the COVID-19 (Temporary Measures) (Control Order) Regulations 2020, the Foreign Employee Dormitories Act 2015 and any other relevant written law, in relation to the foreign employee.
[S 427/2020 wef 02/06/2020]
Extract reproduced from Employment of Foreign Manpower Act
General Offences
22.—(1) Any person who —
(a) being an employer, a foreign employee or a self-employed foreigner to whom a work pass applies or had applied, contravenes any condition (other than a regulatory condition) of the work pass or in-principle approval of the application for the work pass;
shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on conviction —
(i) in the case of an offence under paragraph (a), (b) or (c), to a fine not exceeding $10,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months or to both;