Domog (name changed) consulting with his case officer at TWC2

Many people, especially in Singapore, conceive of the work of charities as giving stuff to less privileged people, or maybe conducting classes. Such work has its place if the target group has material needs or skills deficits. With migrant workers however, these are not the root causes of their problems. Instead, their main problems spring from their exclusion from information and power, resulting in a situation where they either lack awareness of how to resolve whatever problems they face, or even if they are aware, they cannot access the avenues for resolution. They are blocked by language, people more powerful than them (mostly employers), fear of having to write off prepaid costs (e.g. agent fees), lack of time or savings to sustain themselves while striving for justice, or unfamiliarity with Singapore’s laws and bureaucratic culture.

Knowing the disempowered situation they are in, unscrupulous bosses take advantage of them, compounding workers’ difficulties.

This shapes the work that we at TWC2 do. A big part of our mission is to help workers overcome the asymmetries of information and power. To illustrate this, we will describe the series of crises that Domog (name changed) faced in a one-week period in early July 2025 and how TWC2 intervened.

Merely giving stuff or giving talks would not have helped Domog and other workers like him. Such forms of charity might make the privileged giver feel good, but it does nothing at all to address real needs.

That being said, providing services in the form of emergency housing, food and medical care (the last one not needed in Domog’s case) has a part to play. TWC2 in fact has programmes that provide such support, but they are secondary to our main mission. We support workers materially when all other sources of support fails, but material support is not an end in itself; it is to help sustain our clients while they seek redress, and is therefore adjunct to the help we give (“casework”) that deals head-on with the asymmetries of information and power. In other words, without doing casework, there is hardly any point in providing material support.

Getting out of a bad job

We wrote about Domog a month ago in Laundromat City. In that story, we recounted the many payments he had to make to his agents for getting a job at an airconditioning company in April 2025. But those payments were not the reason why he came to seek help from TWC2. Instead, within two weeks after starting with the company on 24 April 2025, he realised it was going to be a bad job with a bad employer, and he needed to find a way to get out of it before things got worse.

How bad was bad?

Domog is no newbie to Singapore. He has worked here on and off through more than ten years, many of which were with airconditioning companies. In this latest company, he was promised a basic salary of $910 a month, which sounds about right in terms of the market rate for a migrant worker like him. However, in the first week of May, the boss began pressing him to accept a salary reduction of nine percent to $832 a month. Naturally, Domog was not agreeable to that. Such a move also suggested that the initial offer of $910, inducing him to accept the job, had been insincere. Deceitful might be another way to describe it.

On 9 May 2025, “Boss, say stop work,” Domog tells TWC2. For six successive days (10 – 15 May) Domog was not assigned any work. This was the boss’ way of applying pressure on him to accept the pay cut. Domog didn’t expect to be paid for those non-working days. He wasn’t sure what the rules were regarding such situations where no work was assigned to him, but regardless of the rules, he was certain that the boss simply wouldn’t pay.

Seeing resistance from Domog, the boss issued an ultimatum on 13 May: Agree to the salary reduction or the Work Permit would be cancelled. Domog finally caved in on 15 May and signed a document the boss presented to him, agreeing to the lower salary. “He back date to 17 April,” Domog told us with some bitterness. 17 April was the date that MOM issued the In-Principle Approval for this job.

He was allowed to go back to work from 16 May onwards.

Unluckily, some metal grit got into Domog’s eyes in early June while he was cutting galvanised iron sheets to fashion into ducting. He had to find his own medical treatment, but immediately, pressure was applied on him not to take medical leave. He was also warned by his agent not to submit medical bills to the company. Domog realised as a result that this was an employer that had no intention to live up to its obligations regarding medical care and medical leave, not even when a workplace incident occurs.

Domog’s problem was that he didn’t know any way to get out of a bad job except to rely on the goodwill of his boss to give him a transfer letter. So, while relations had not yet deteriorated beyond repair, he decided to tell his boss he wanted to leave, and request for such a letter. The boss agreed, but only gave him a week or so to find a new job. Such a short time presented a huge challenge, but Domog somehow managed to find a new opening; as an experienced worker, he has contacts in Singapore.

Yet, according to Domog, when the new employer put in his application for a Work Permit for him, the airconditioning employer failed to follow through by signing off on the transfer (this step apparently a requirement of the Ministry of Manpower). Once again, Domog had reason to doubt the sincerity of the airconditioning employer, this time in relation to the transfer letter.

Domog felt he had little choice but to plead with his boss for more time to look for yet another job. The boss reluctantly agreed to give him a few more days (listen to the phone conversation below) but added conditions. At the same time, Domog knew in his heart that the boss would likely sabotage any new job he could find, having sabotaged the first one.

Domog was alarmed by the boss’ demand for payment of rent and levy in the above conversation – he just didn’t have the money. It is illegal for an employer to demand money from an employee to pay the Monthly Foreign Worker Levy, but how was Domog going to resist this demand and still hope for the goodwill of his boss to grant a transfer? Hoping for a way around this conundrum, he made his way to TWC2.

Good thing he came to us, because we could immediately see a way out for him, albeit that it would be a different route from what he had in mind. The key was our discovery that the employer had not paid him the correct salary for the preceding months. Although the amount was not large – Domog had not worked for long – it was enough to file a salary claim. It is standing policy at the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) that any worker faced with an employer violation – this includes failure to pay salary – will be given permission to seek a transfer job locally without first having to be repatriated. This would be permission given by MOM, different from permission that he was seeking from his employer. And unlike the backtracking that he had encountered with his employer’s earlier permission letter, we advised him that MOM does not play such games. It took a while for Domog to grasp this fully, he having been conditioned to think that employers are all-powerful and that the only kind of transfer permission was the kind given by the grace of employers.

Domog took our case officer’s advice and filed a salary claim. As expected, as soon as the employer heard that he had filed a salary claim, his Work Permit was cancelled. We then ensured that he was put on a Special Pass which kept him legal in Singapore while the claim proceeded. We also advised him that under the law, the employer had to continue providing him with housing while he was under a Special Pass. Consequently, the employer’s demand for rent and levy money became moot. In addition, the employer had to provide him with meals now that he was under a Special Pass, a benefit that had not been available to him while he was on a Work Permit.

All this was new to Domog. If not for advice from TWC2, he would have been totally lost as to what his entitlements were nor how to respond to money demands. And just in time too.

Evicted

The very day after Domog came to consult with us, he faced a new issue and had to call TWC2 again: he was being evicted from his accommodation at Race Course Road. We temporarily admitted him into TWC2’s emergency shelter for a night while advising him to raise the matter directly with the MOM officer assigned to oversee his accommodation.

MOM responded quickly and by the next morning a dorm bunk (not at the previous Race Course Road location) had been arranged by the employer (surely under direction of MOM) for him. However, when Domog arrived at the new location, he found that the assigned upper bunk was situated hard against a window and this was a safety issue. Despite communicating his concerns to the above-mentioned MOM officer, Domog was told to resolve the matter directly with the employer. Domog tried to do so but could not resolve the impasse. We then readmitted him to our emergency shelter for another night.

Forced repatriation

The next morning, a new crisis. At 10am, Domog was alerted by both his employer and the MOM officer that he was due to be repatriated, and that he should show up at the airport immediately. Our case officer had to intervene again, informing all parties that since Domog had a pending salary case, it was not proper to repatriate him.

This is written into law. The Employment of Foreign Manpower (Work Passes) Regulations 2012  >  Fourth Schedule > Part III > item 15 says:

…. the employer shall not repatriate the foreign employee when such repatriation would frustrate or deny any statutory claim

Learning about the pending salary case, the MOM officer agreed that Domog should not board the flight. However, he insisted that Domog return to the bunk bed that had been allotted to him – the same bed that the worker had considered unsafe. To make sure that nothing was lost in the proverbial translation, our case officer now had to help Domog write out a text message to the MOM officer to explain why the bed was unsuitable.

Another bunk

Two days later, yet another dormitory bunk was found for Domog, and he was asked to move there. Still, things didn’t go smoothly, but this time there was a twist. When Domog arrived at the dormitory he found MOM officers there already, and was told that MOM themselves found the room conditions unacceptable. Here is a photo of the bunks in the room.

So, Domog had to call TWC2 once more and we let him move back into our emergency shelter. Again.

Ultimately, the employer found a bed for him in Woodlands. This time, Domog was satisfied and moved over. But this new location came with a new problem. The room was located in a factory building in an industrial area without catering facilities. Domog would have to go out to a coffeeshop or minimart to buy his meals. However, the employer would only give him $9 per day which is totally insufficient for three daily meals. Once more TWC2’s case officer has to get involved, to get a more reasonable food allowance for him from the employer.

As at the time of writing, this issue remains unresolved.

If not for our case officer…

Domog’s issues would have gone down a very different path if not for the advice and assistance of TWC2’s casework team. To start with, he would probably not have succeeded in getting a local transfer on the basis of the employer’s permission letter. He might have succumbed to the employer’s demand to pay a month’s rent and levy costs, despite this being an illegal demand – that’s if he could even raise the money to pay the boss.

Without TWC2, he would not have known how to file a salary claim.

Without our intervention, he might have been repatriated against his will despite his right to stay on to pursue a claim. Even the MOM officer was of no help.

Without our assistance, he would have been made to stay in an unsafe dorm bunk. And even now, after the accommodation issue has been resolved, there remains the issue of a meal allowance.

Would a worker, dealing directly with MOM, been able to get the same support? The details of this story suggests otherwise. At several points, Domog didn’t know what options he had and wouldn’t have got the kind of advice he got from us, from anywhere else. Even if he knew what options he had, he had no access to the right person in MOM to deflect his employer’s demands (as in the attempted repatriation). Moreover, as the matter of the unsafe bunk adjacent to a window showed, even when he tried to tell the MOM officer verbally that it was not safe, he was merely told to resolve this with his employer, who was (no surprise there) uncooperative. We had to help him write out a text message to MOM to articulate the concern clearly.

Casework is central to TWC2’s mission; it is what makes a difference for migrant workers in difficulty. As Nazmul below says, it is knowing the system and how to navigate the system that matters.

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