The above is a file picture, not one of the images and videos taken by the worker and sent to TWC2
Joni’s employer locked him up in a small isolation room with a padlock, preventing him from going out freely. Why do we keep seeing migrant workers like Joni, having their freedom of movement so blatantly taken away? What allows employers to treat migrant workers this way?
Joni’s case in 2025
On a Saturday afternoon in April 2025, TWC2 received an urgent call from Joni (name changed). “I’m locked up in a sick bay room,” he said. Alarmed, we asked him for more details just to be sure we’ve understood the situation correctly. After several exchanges of messages, photos, and videos, it became clear that Joni was being wrongfully confined against his will without lawful justification.
In Singapore, when a person wrongfully restrains another in a way that prevents him or her from moving beyond certain defined limits, it constitutes wrongful confinement, which is an offence under the law, punishable by imprisonment or a fine.
His employer had placed him in the dormitory’s isolation room, a repurposed shipping container with an attached bathroom. The space had no windows and relied on a small exhaust fan for ventilation and a standing fan to cope with the daytime heat. This space was isolated from the rest of the dormitory by an extra door secured outside with a number padlock.
The isolation room seen from the outside
In one of photos and videos Joni sent us, we could see both a padlock and a metal deadbolt on the outside of the door which prevented him from leaving the space. He had been instructed to call the dormitory cleaner if he needed to leave the space – though the implication is that the cleaner might still have to obtain agreement from management before acceding to any request.
A screen capture from a video that Joni sent us. It was taken from inside the container, and shows both a bolt and padlock on the outside of the door.
Wrongful confinement usually constitutes an emergency. It puts a person’s physical safety at risk, especially in the event of fire or medical crisis. So, we immediately called 999. The operator quickly understood the urgency and assured us officers would be dispatched to the dormitory.
Shortly after, we received an update from Joni that three police officers had arrived and freed him from the room. The officers also verbally reprimanded the employer. Joni was allowed to rejoin his coworkers in the regular dormitory room. Fortunately, his wrongful confinement lasted only a few hours, thanks to his quick thinking in reaching out for help and the prompt response by the police.
What led to Joni’s wrongful confinement? Earlier that day, Joni was discharged from a government hospital after a week of treatment for his back injury. Although he wished to proceed with a scheduled spine surgery the following day, his employer arranged for his discharge, citing the high cost of the procedure. As the surgery was classified as elective, the hospital had no choice but to comply. After the discharge, the employer brought him back to the dormitory’s sick bay (also known as the isolation room) and locked him up, probably to stop him from returning to the hospital for treatment.
A screen capture from a video that Joni sent us. It shows the dormitory cleaner telling Joni that if he needed anything, he could call the cleaner. During the brief conversation, Joni asked if the outside door would be locked, and the cleaner nodded and indicated that he had been told to lock it.
A recurring issue
Wrongful confinement of migrant workers is a troubling but recurring issue in Singapore. Through more than a decade, TWC2 has seen cases every couple of months or so. Back in 2011, repatriation companies were forcibly detaining workers, often to prevent them from filing injury or salary claims [see footnote 1].That same year, the MOM issued warning letters to two such companies. Although MOM stopped short of explicitly calling it “wrongful confinement,” the message was unmistakable: these companies were unlawfully restricting workers’ movements and obstructing their access to justice.
Despite this action by MOM, the issue persisted. In 2016, a woman named Chua Siew Peng was sentenced to 21 weeks in prison for confining her domestic worker [footnote 2]. In 2020, during the COVID-19 outbreak, a general manager of a company called Ad-Meth Mech Field was fined $9,000 for confining three workers for 42 days [footnote 3]. Another employer faced a hiring ban, and the dormitory operator received a stern warning from the police after confining 20 workers in a dormitory called Joylicious for two days (see our articles Joyless Joylicious Parts 1, 2 and 3). One of the affected workers even went on to file a civil lawsuit against the employer and dormitory operator [footnote 4].
In 2022, TWC2 reported 10 new cases of suspected wrongful confinement to the MOM, where dorm operators or employers barred workers from leaving the dormitory without a lawful justification. Some of the affected workers reported being confined for up to eleven months. Although in these cases the workers were not prevented from leaving by locked doors, these cases underscore an ongoing problem: the abuse of power by those meant to house or employ migrant workers, leaving the vulnerable trapped physically through intimidation.
Systemic roots
While we cannot fully read the minds of those who wrongfully confine migrant workers, we can make an informed guess as to the mentality underlying such practices. In Singapore, employers of low-wage migrant workers, particularly those on Work Permits, are given considerable control over nearly every aspect of their workers’ lives by law and government policy, including employment status, access to medical care, and choice of accommodation.
Crucially, Work Permit holders are generally not allowed to change employers without consent, and this dependency, created by the regulatory system, makes them exceptionally vulnerable to coercion and exploitation.
Healthcare access is another area where power imbalances play out. Although employers are required to purchase medical insurance for Work Permit holders, hospitals often demand a guarantee letter from the employer for treatments exceeding a few hundred dollars (unless it’s an emergency). If an employer refuses to issue this letter, workers may be denied care despite being insured. Some employers further exert control through threats of “blacklisting”, warning workers that any disobedience could result in losing future job opportunities, a threat that, while often baseless, has a chilling effect on workers’ ability to speak up.
In this environment, many workers internalise a deep sense of submission, fearing the consequences of speaking out even when they are subjected to exploitation or mistreatment, such as salary underpayment, denied access to medical treatment, and being unlawfully confined. In some confinement cases, it is only after weeks or months of mistreatment that some muster the courage to seek help, sometimes by literally escaping. One such worker scaled a dormitory wall after being locked in for months, finally breaking free to report what had happened. These stories reflect the realities in employer-employee relationships produced by the deeply flawed power structures legitimised by the State.
On occasion, ignorance of the law (on the part of employers) appears to be a factor. In one case we assisted with where the worker was confined for five months in the dormitory, the employer’s HR personnel and dormitory management nonchalantly admitted to us that they were preventing the worker from leaving the dormitory freely to ensure he would not try to moonlight while on medical leave. They seemed to think that doing so was perfectly within their rights. Only after we explained that such actions could amount to the criminal offence of wrongful confinement and that they had no legal authority to restrict the worker’s movement, did they quickly inform the worker that he was free to leave. In another case, an employer and dormitory management barred a worker from leaving the dormitory for 22 days following his discharge from the hospital. After we filed a complaint with the MOM, it became clear that the employer had wrongly assumed they were legally justified in confining the worker simply because he was on medical leave, recovering from a thumb injury. His confinement ended soon after MOM intervened and clarified that the employer had no right to impose such restrictions.
Improvements and continued vigilance
Based on our casework since 2020, we have observed a marked shift in the response to reports of migrant worker wrongful confinement. The Joylicious case, which occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, received significant media coverage and sparked public outcry. We believe that the reporting had some educational effect on employers and dormitory operators alike, making them more aware of the legal and reputational consequences of unlawfully confining migrant workers.
We also believe that our efforts to report a series of suspected wrongful confinement cases in dormitories, alongside MOM’s follow-up actions in 2022, have contributed to raising awareness among employers and dormitory operators. This may have played a role in the noticeable decline in similar complaints in 2023 and 2024.
Yet, the wrongful confinement of Joni in 2025 serves as a sobering reminder that such abuses of power have not been eradicated. Some employers continue to act with a sense of unchecked authority, wrongfully restricting the freedom of their workers. This is not merely a case of individual wrongdoing; it points to a deeper structural flaw in a system that grants employers disproportionate control over migrant workers. This imbalance breeds a false sense of entitlement among some employers, who come to believe they can ignore workers’ rights without consequence, while fostering resignation and silence among workers themselves. When combined with ignorance of the law, these conditions create an environment in which wrongful confinement and other mistreatment can continue to occur.
[1] Yahoo News, 3 August 2011, “Missing migrant workers hunted down in Singapore”, link; The Online Citizen, 30 Nov 2011, “Repartriation Companies – Manpower Minister’s response belittles the efforts of migrant workers”, link
[2] The Straits Times, 26 May 2017, “Jail term tripled for employer who locked maid in condo”, link
[3] Straits Times, 17 September 2020, “Fine for manager who wrongfully confined 3 foreign workers for 42 days amid Covid-19 outbreak”, link
[4] United States of America, Department of State, 2021 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Singapore link QUOTE: “In December 2020 a construction worker sued his employer, V Spec Engineering & Supplies, and dormitory operator Joylicious Management, for being forcibly locked up with approximately 20 other migrant workers for 43 hours in April 2020 after a roommate tested positive for COVID-19. The Ministry of Manpower had previously issued a stern warning to Joylicious Management and put a hiring freeze on V Spec in April 2020.” ENDQUOTE.
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