The blank salary voucher that Proddi was asked to sign.
Bissek and Proddi, both Bangladeshi workers (names changed to protect them from retaliation), are employed by the same company, but report to different bosses. The company is one of three that seem to be associated with each other. In November and December 2025, well over a hundred workers from these three companies came to TWC2 over salary non-payment. We first mentioned these three companies in the article How to make a million dollars and get away with it.
Like their numerous co-workers, Bissek and Proddi were owed their salaries too, but when we had an opportunity to sit down with them for a longer interview, they shared their stories of how their respective bosses tried to cover up the non-payment.
What Bissek’s boss tried to do was written up in a previous story. What Proddi’s boss tried to do is the subject of this story.
“This is what my boss want me to sign,” says Proddi, a migrant worker from Bangladesh, pointing to an image of a blank salary voucher on his phone (it’s in the header picture above). “It is white,” – his way of saying that it is all blank.
“How can I sign?” he asks rhetorically.
Payment vouchers and salary vouchers should have all details filled in before any recipient is asked to sign; the signature being an acknowledgement of receipt. There can be no legitimate circumstance where an employee is asked to sign a blank form like this.
“Other man already complain to MOM,” Proddi adds. About seven or eight co-workers had apparently lodged salary non-payment complaints at the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) by this point in time. Proddi and many others were in a similar position, not having received any salary at all since joining the company, about five months earlier in Proddi’s case. By asking Proddi to sign blank forms, one naturally wonders whether the boss Alagu Pandi was trying to create false documentation to “prove” to MOM that salaries had been paid.
Proddi stood his ground and refused to sign.
A day or two later, boss Alagu called him down from his room and asked to meet him in the company van. Proddi climbed into the back. The boss (in blue shirt) was seated in the front passenger seat, while the company driver was in the driver’s seat. The video below shows what happened next. The boss grabs Proddi’s right arm and makes him apply his thumbprint onto a blank salary voucher. Unfortunately, the inkpad is too dry, and the first attempt is unsuccessful. The driver asks for a bottle of water to moisten the ink pad and a second attempt (this time successful) is made at around the one-minute mark in the video.
Proddi’s thumbprint was applied to five blank forms against his will.
It is noteworthy that Proddi’s thumbprint was affixed to five blank forms. Five is no coincidence; Proddi had worked five months in this company, and had not been paid for all those months.
Understandably, Proddi was very unhappy at being subjected to this. In any case, he was already frustrated at not having received any salary. He then asked around where he might get help, and a couple of days later, on 1 December 2025, he WhatsApp’d TWC2. We asked him to come to our office, helped him calculate how much he was owed and sent him to MOM to lodge a formal salary complaint.
Paid $10,000 for the job
“How did you get this job?” we ask Proddi.
“My cousin-brother. He find for me.”
His cousin was then working in Singapore (he has since returned to Bangladesh). Proddi does not know how exactly the cousin found this job for him, but what he can tell us is that the cousin had to pay $10,000 to the boss Alagu in cash. Moreover, Proddi had to buy his own flight ticket from Dhaka, which cost him a further 40,000 Bangladeshi taka, or about $400.
The company applied to MOM for a Work Permit for Proddi. This was approved in late April 2025, and MOM then issued a document “In-principle Approval for a Work Permit (IPA)”. It showed a salary of $432 per month for the job of a Process sector worker, with no allowances or deductions. On the IPA, it was stated that housing would be provided by the employer.
Proddi arrived in Singapore in July 2025.
From the start, contractual violations began. Proddi says he was coerced by his boss to split the cost of his housing rent (it is a shophouse in Geylang) – showing us screenshots of transactions he made directly to the landlord. This was despite the fact that the IPA clearly stated that housing would be provided by the employer. In addition to the $500 he had to send to the landlord, Proddi says he was made to pay his boss for two months of levy fees ($1,000 per month), bringing the total outlay to $2,500. Not having any money in hand. Proddi had to borrow the amounts from his cousin to pay the boss.
The company didn’t actually have projects of its own. Instead, Proddi and the rest of his coworkers were supplied out to other companies. In Proddi’s case, his work mostly consisted of odd jobs such as painting and the installation of electrical cables at various construction sites. He would be supplied to a different site at different times; it was a very unstable job.
A measly monthly food allowance of $100
Proddi’s case is still ongoing as at the date of our interview, as are the cases for most of his co-workers who have filed similar complaints, numbering over a hundred of them. Our article How to make over a million dollars and get away with it gives an overview of this whole bunch of workers and how much money the bosses collected from their employees in return for giving them jobs.
In the meantime, Proddi’s Work Permit has been cancelled and MOM has issued him a Special Pass, enabling him to remain in Singapore while his case proceeds. One condition of the Special Pass is that employers must continue to provide accommodation. Proddi and about forty others have been put in a rooming house in Campbell Lane, in the Little India district.
Another condition of the Special Pass is that employers must provide meals. On this, Proddi says, “Boss give only one hundred dollars in December for food.”
We check, “Is that for the whole month?”
“Yes,” he says, the stress in his voice becoming evident. “How enough for one month?”
In a subsequent article, we will write about the housing and food situation for this whole group of workers and how absurd things have become. Some other workers have it even worse than Proddi.
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