This is an AI-generated image. Any resemblance to any real monkey is unintended.
It has been more than a year since Mondol’s last day of work in Singapore. Since then, Mondol (name changed) has been spending his days bored crazy in his dormitory in Tuas – waiting for resolution of an injury claim. Such processes involving insurers can be long and drawn out, leaving the injured worker, Mondol in this case, languishing helplessly.
It’s early September 2024. As a supply worker, Mondol is usually tasked with odd jobs around construction sites, doing everything from transporting buckets of cement to packing scaffolding. His workplace this month is a construction project at the fringes of Singapore’s Central Catchment Nature Reserve. He has been assigned to this project for two months and this day is no exception, working outdoors in sweltering jungle heat.
There’s a nearby pond (which is also under construction) which attracts a troupe of about 20 to 30 long-tailed macaques. Mondol often sees the macaques bathing in the water, seeking respite from the overbearing heat.
Equally overbearing is Mondol’s supervisor. The superior calls him several times a day asking for pictures of his work as proof that he is in fact working on site. The day of Mondol’s injury is no exception: at about 5.30pm, with the day’s work winding down, Mondol attends to housekeeping around the site. His phone rings. He picks up the call, acknowledges what the supervisor wants and begins to reply with photographs of what he’s been doing. Whilst preoccupied with texting the reply, Mondol hears a deep rumbling growl from behind. He turns around. Bared white teeth, poised to pounce. The macaque is less than a metre away. A shrill bark, then a sudden leap. Mahamud quickly turns and runs. The next moment, he comes face to face with the rough concrete ground he has just swept. A violent crack – this time from his arm – and a piercing jolt of pain.
Not like on television
An hour later, the pain in Mahamud’s arm has dulled to an ache, but it isn’t until the next morning before Mondol, accompanied by a supervisor, is taken to a medical clinic in Little India. A clinic has little resources to treat a broken arm, so Mondol is awarded three days of medical leave and instructed to go to a hospital. But that doesn’t happen immediately either. The pace of medical attention Mondol receives is not at all like in television dramas where emergency room staff rush to deal with broken bones and patients in pain. In his case, he is not even taken to the emergency room (of Ng Teng Fong General Hospital) until the next day. Yes, two days after the injury.
At the hospital, his worst fears are confirmed. His left arm has suffered a fracture, and he is told that it will take three months to recover fully.
It’s the dollars and cents, however, that concerns the boss. Seeing the bill, the boss suggests that Mondol return home to Bangladesh, a suggestion that Mondol obviously has not accepted.
Recovery
The next three months are spent resting in the Tuas dormitory. Mondol attends regular check ups at the hospital and has a string of medical certificates to show for that. During this time, Mondol receives his basic salary, and his medical expenses are covered. Catered lunch and dinner are also provided in the dormitory.
By November 2024, three months after the fall, Mondol’s recovery has progressed enough for him to go back to work, though on a light duty basis – doctor’s orders. However, the boss seems to have decided that the does not want Mondol back, for reasons unknown. TWC2 sees this all too often: employers preferring to get rid of workers even though the injury is eminently recoverable.
They don’t even have the courtesy of discussing this with the employee. Instead, a company manager asks Mondol to follow him in a vehicle, and Mondol thinks it’s to take him to a newly assigned worksite. To his disbelief, he is taken to the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) where his Work Permit is cancelled and he is issued a Special Pass instead.
Bureaucratic limbo
With his Work Permit cancelled, Mondol has no job to go back to (even though doctors have certified him fit to work) and naturally, he has been without income at all. He can’t even apply for a new job, because the “system” does not allow an injured worker – even one fully recovered from his injury – to seek new work! All he can do is to wait for wheels to turn, outside his control. It has been almost ten months since his work pass termination and, as at the date of the interview, exactly twelve months since the accident. The bureaucratic limbo phase has lasted three times longer than the healing phase. Behind this bureaucratic paralysis is an insurer disputing that the injury was work-related.
How can that be? Of course it was work-related. It happened while Mondol was at a worksite, communicating with his supervisor.
This is another thing that TWC2 has seen all to often: insurance companies disputing a claim because they can. The financial impact on Mondol, however, is catastrophic. Yet, nobody in authority seems to care.
Let’s put some numbers to the catastrophe. Before the accident, he was able to set aside $700 from his salary each month for remittance to his family. Whilst on his medical leave, earning only the basic salary of $450, Mondol tried to send $100 – $200 back. But with his income now at zero, any fraction of zero is still zero.
Mondol worries for his family and three-year-old daughter. He is also nagged by debts he knows he has to repay, money borrowed in order to pay $4,000 to the agent in Bangladesh to find him the shortlived job (it only lasted 16 months) and another $5,000 to the training centre that got him his basic construction skills certificate. Mondol estimates he has about $3,000 of outstanding debt.
Work injury insurance is mandatory; it is a form of social protection. However, instead of insurance providing peace of mind, it – more accurately the wide latitude and discretion given to insurers and employers to handle injury claims – has been weaponised as a shield against costs. Their costs.
It is Mondol bearing the cost. It is him subjected to dehumanising coldness, cast into bureaucratic purgatory. The question to ask is: how did social protection policies and mechanisms become this?
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