Parliament House abuts the Singapore River

During the September 2025 sitting of Parliament, there were two questions put to the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) regarding Training Employment Passes (TEPs).

Number of employers and foreign students and trainees being involved in investigation for abuse of TEP scheme

Member of Parliament Elysa Chen (PAP) asked the Minister for Manpower, with regards to the reported abuses of the Training Employment Pass scheme, (a) how many employers have been put under investigation since the beginning of 2023; and (b) how many foreign students and trainees have been involved in relation to these investigations.

MOM replied:

In 2023 and 2024, 230 employers involving 520 TEP holders were investigated for abuse of the Training Employment Pass (TEP) scheme.

Number of TEP approved and number of reports on TEP abuse

Member of Parliament Patrick Tay Teck Guan (PAP) asked the Minister for Manpower for each year from 2021 to date (a) what is the number of Training Employment Passes (TEP) approved; and (b) what is the number of reports related to TEP abuse that have been received.

MOM replied:

The Training Employment Pass (TEP) is a short-term pass of up to three months for foreign trainees or students to undergo training in Singapore. The number of TEP applications approved in 2021 and 2022 was 900 and 4,500 respectively. This was due to border measures that were imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Following the reopening of our borders post-pandemic, the number of TEP applications that were approved increased to 15,600 and 16,500 in 2023 and 2024 respectively.

Reports on TEP abuse have also increased from 9 and 18 in 2021 and 2022 respectively, to about 200 and 150 in 2023 and 2024 respectively. MOM has sent out advisories to educate employers on the proper use of the scheme and stepped up checks on TEP applications. We have also mounted several enforcement operations to tackle the abuse of the scheme. Arising from these operations, about 70 companies are being investigated for offences such as making false declarations in work pass applications.

TWC2’s comment

The numbers are astounding. As readers may know, TWC2 blew the whistle on the abuse of the Training Employment Pass (TEP) in May 2025 with our article Management executives washing dishes. A month later, we had a follow-up article which described how the illegitimate use of this three-month work pass was widely and brazenly marketed. If any reader needs some background as to what the TEP controversy is about, the linked articles will explain.

In a third article, Glacially slow investigation and the victims it spawns, we expressed some amazement that the abuse of TEP had not only been going on for years, MOM had known of such abuse for a long time too. Yet, little action seems to have been taken.

One curious thing from the minister’s reply was the reference to Covid-19. It is unclear what the pandemic has to do with the widespread misuse of TEP. The opening of borders and the rebooting of the economy certainly led to a surge in demand for labour but that does not explain why MOM didn’t see those numbers (15,600 in 2023 and 16,500 in 2024) as cause for a deeper inquiry.

It’s not as if such misuse is victimless. Not at all. Few employers bringing in TEP workers for low-level jobs can truly afford the $3,000 monthly salary. So, workers are cheated of their wages despite glowing promises and after having to pay a recruitment fee pegged to the high theoretical salary.

More seriously, as we discussed with a member of parliament some months ago, there are knock-on effects on Singaporeans who are low-skilled and who have been displaced by this flood of TEP workers. The government designed a Progressive Wage Model to help raise the pay of low-skill Singaporeans, but this scheme is defeated when the Singaporean can’t even get a job.

Even after TWC2 blew the whistle on the rampant misuse of the TEP, new TEPs were still being issued by MOM to companies that weren’t doing any executive training. To us, it was inexplicable. Take for example the case of Burmese worker Win Maw (name changed). He got his TEP job in August 2025, three months after TWC2 (and the Straits Times and Channel NewsAsia) flagged the issue. Win Maw was hired to be a cleaner and caretaker of a laundromat.

But now, a clean-up seems to be underway. Win Maw came to TWC2 in the first week of October, barely six weeks into his job, to say his TEP had been cancelled. At first he thought that it was his employer who terminated him but it turned out that it was MOM that ordered the termination. The employer sent Win Maw a portion of the WhatsApp message that the ministry sent to him (the employer) about not meeting the “eligibility requirements”:

From being too slow to act, the ministry looks like it has gone into overdrive. They could have simply let the three-month TEPs run out and not issue any more (except for truly justified executive training programmes). Instead, there is a sort of cull going on, leaving workers like Win Maw in the lurch. Having paid thousands of dollars for the job, he now cannot rely on working for all three months.

Between the rather astounding numbers, the years of inaction and now the hurried cull, much about this TEP mess seems to be handled in the most painful way possible.

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