Following the Straits Times’ commentary article of 19 May 2026 (see also our write-up LINK NEEDED), several readers’ letters were also published, of which four were significant enough for us to comment on. One was from the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), another from the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC), and two more from employer associations.
From the Ministry of Manpower
Published on 29 May 2026, the letter from MOM can be seen here. The most striking thing about it is that it speaks past the points made by journalist Tan Dawn Wei in her Straits Times commentary of 19 May 2026. Whereas the commentary focussed on “recruitment debt, excessive overtime, barriers to changing employers, inadequate protections for injured workers, unsafe transport and the immense power employers still wield over workers’ housing, immigration status and livelihoods” – what we call conditions of employment – MOM’s letter barely touches on these points.
Instead, the Singapore government keeps trying to confine the discourse to living conditions, socialisation and infection control. Look at the second paragraph from MOM and the opening sentence of the third parargaph (the first paragraph had the usual courtesies):
Over the years, Singapore has strengthened standards and safeguards for migrant workers across housing, healthcare, workplace safety, and social and recreational needs.
Since 2021, new dormitories have been required to meet higher standards, including more living space, lower room occupancy and en-suite bathrooms….
It then moves on to healthcare.
MOM has worked closely with community and industry partners to ensure migrant workers can access quality healthcare affordably. In 2023, MOM increased the mandatory medical insurance coverage for Work Permit and S Pass holders from $15,000 to $60,000 annually…
The next paragraph finally touches on the issues raised by the opinion piece in the Straits Times.
We understand concerns around recruitment costs and workers’ reliance on intermediaries. While a significant proportion of workers’ recruitment fees are incurred in their home countries and outside Singapore’s jurisdiction, we have put in place safeguards within Singapore, including capping fees that employment agencies in Singapore can charge workers.
The letter tries to cast the recruitment fee problem as something largely beyond Singapore’s control, while allowing that it also occurs on our own shores. Yet, in doing so, it implies that controlling the behaviour of employment agencies is sufficient, when everyone with some understanding of migrant labour in Singapore – and that must surely include people at the ministry – know very well that it is the involvement of unlicensed freelance recruiters operating in Singapore that constitutes the bulk of the problem here. As we’ve documented in countless stories on this website, these freelancers are hardly afraid of enforcement action while raking in thousands of dollars.
MOM has also been working with the industry to facilitate direct hiring of migrant workers, reducing reliance on middlemen in their home countries. This includes directly matching former construction migrant workers who wish to return to Singapore with prospective employers.
This is interesting but also mystifying. There has been no announcement, no publicity. We have no information what exactly is being tried and what results have been seen so far.
MOM is committed to protecting the employment rights of migrant workers. Employers who breach employment laws may face fines, debarment from hiring foreign workers and prosecution.
Prosecutions are rare. As for administrative sanctions, such as compound fines and debarment, there is no public information available that can provide a sense of its frequency and weight of penalties. TWC2 argued in our letter to the editor that instances of administrative penalties should be routinely publicised; doing so would have a far greater deterrent effect (assuming that MOM actually catches and penalises offenders often enough) than keeping it all a huge secret.
From Singapore National Employers’ Federation
The letter from SNEF can be seen here. It was published on 26 May 2026. Some pertinent excerpts with our comments:
Singapore has a suite of legal protections for migrant workers. From our interactions, the vast majority of employers comply with and go beyond the legal requirements, ensuring that migrant workers operate in safe working conditions as guided by the relevant workplace safety laws and guidelines, along with better accommodations and access to quality healthcare services as seen in the recent uplifts in dormitory standards.
Like MOM’s letter, SNEF’s tries to shift the conversation from employment conditions to living conditions. It also makes too much of laws in place, when the problem, including as implied in the Straits Times article, has to do with the extremely lopsided power equation between employers and migrant workers. This lopsided equation can often be traced to the kinds of laws and policies in effect. So, referencing “legal requirements” doesn’t really address the issue.
In any case, the claim that the “vast majority” of employers comply with and go beyond the legal requirements has to be interrogated. SNEF has about 4,000 corporate members. Our sense is that whilst the vast majority of SNEF members might be law-abiding, few of them are employers of Work Permit holders, the subject of the Straits Times article.
A TWC2 article from 2020, How many employers are there?, cited a Straits Times story that in turn cited MOM saying that there were 66,000 employers who had Work Permit and S-Pass employees. These numbers should put SNEF’s claim into context.
Moreover, as a simple test, we pulled up the names of employers whose workers filed salary claims with our help in the month of May 2026. There were 70 such workers, from 59 unique employers. None of the 59 companies that employed these unpaid workers were members of SNEF when compared against SNEF’s published list of its members. Can the SNEF actually speak for this far more numerous class of employers?
Some of the examples cited in the Opinion pieces are exceptions rather than the norm. Where employers flout the law, breaches must be dealt with firmly.
TWC2 has plenty of research reports and case studies on this site showing that in the area of low-wage migrant employment, the issues being discussed here – heavy recruitment fees, salary shortages, contract substitution, and barriers to switching jobs – are rampant. They are not “exceptions” or isolated cases. However, we agree with that breaches must be dealt with firmly; in fact, TWC2 has long pointed out that MOM’s enforcement efforts are too weak. We do hear unofficially about instances when employers are penalised with administrative measures, but MOM rarely discloses such cases (and they might in fact be rare).
Securing contract employment in Singapore is still highly desirable for migrant workers.
Indeed, working in Singapore is desirable for migrant workers. For many of them, the alternative is no employment and no income at all in their home countries. That said, we should not fool ourselves into thinking Singapore is such a great place to be when it’s a push factor at work, not a pull. Working here is desirable because at least there is hope. But when nearly 100% of them have to pay hefty recruitment fees and a good percentage then suffer other abuses along the way, such as salary shortfalls or contract substitution, saying “desirable” over and over again begins to serve as denial and deflection.
If ours is a canteen serving bad food and starving people still come to eat, we should be careful not to imagine that we are a Michelin-star place.
From the Singapore Contractors Association and the Association of Singapore Marine and Offshore Energy Industries
The welfare, safety and dignity of workers remain important priorities across our industries, and it is right that Singapore continues to strengthen standards and workforce practices over time.
At the same time, it is important to recognise both the progress made over the years, particularly following Covid-19, and the operational realities and manpower challenges faced by essential sectors such as construction, marine and process maintenance.
Significant efforts have been made across areas such as housing standards, medical support, salary protections, workplace safety, skills upgrading and workforce development.
Once again, an attempt is made to shift the conversation away from abusive employer-employee relations, this time towards welfare, safety, healthcare and living conditions. ‘Dignity’ is thrown in for good measure, but it can’t have much meaning unless we are prepared to face up to the way we treat migrant workers in terms of money, overwork and control.
Despite continuous efforts to redesign jobs, improve productivity and attract more locals into the sector, manpower shortages remain a longstanding challenge faced not only in Singapore, but across many industrial economies globally.
The size of the migrant labour force in construction and engineering is probably the highest it has ever been, and yet these contractors are saying there are manpower shortages. A better explanation is that job and process redesign is not proceeding fast enough. The manpower shortage is not related to anything the workers are doing, it is related to the quotas set by the government. That the government is setting strict quotas which appear to be causing pain suggests that the government too thinks a lot more can be done to raise skills and productivity. So, the picture that emerges is that the industry is still wedded to the cheap-labour-that-we-can-exploit model.
At the same time, sustainable progress will require support across the broader ecosystem – including procurement practices, project expectations and societal willingness to support the true costs of higher standards, worker welfare and transformation.
We need more money to do what needs to be done – is the message here. Implied threat: Are Singaporeans prepared to pay higher costs for better labour standards?
This is a false dichotomy. Take just two examples:
TWC2 has long proposed a central jobs portal. The cost of setting one up is well within what the government can afford – after all, they have set up numerous other digital portals for citizens to interact with various official bodies. The operational cost can be covered by a fee paid by an employer each time a recruitment is done. There is no reason to think that doing the right thing regarding the present cancer of exorbitant recruitment costs will hit consumers in their pockets.
Another issue highlighted by the Straits Times would be the difficulty in changing jobs. All it needs is a more liberal policy from MOM. How does this hit consumers in their pockets?
From the National Trades Union Congress
Link to the full letter published on 28 May 2026.
The letter from NTUC largely spoke about the ways their sub-unit, the Migrant Workers Centre (MWC), assists workers while pointing out that, as much as migrant workers welcome the opportunity to have a career in Singapore, “challenges remain”.
Migrant workers have played a vital role in Singapore’s development and continue to contribute significantly to our economy and society. Through the Migrant Workers’ Centre’s (MWC) engagement on the ground, many workers share that they are grateful for the opportunity to work in Singapore to support their families and build better futures.
At the same time, challenges remain. Some workers face employment disputes, salary issues or concerns about their well-being.
It was significant that they specifically pointed to the issue of job mobility (the freedom to change jobs) and how this can be a benefit to Singapore as a whole.
The issues of recruitment debt and restrictions on changing employers also warrant continued attention. A more responsive labour market can benefit both workers and employers by enabling companies to hire experienced workers already in Singapore while reducing reliance on overseas recruitment. This may lower recruitment costs for companies and reduce the need for migrant workers to incur new debt when starting work.
The letter also points out that migrant workers switching jobs locally don’t have to pay as much as workers imported from abroad, and will contribute to a lessening of the burden of debt. TWC2 agrees, even if we are a bit more guarded about that. We have seen middlemen operating in Singapore who are as avaricious as those in the countries of origin. The market will not correct itself; it needs firm enforcement and a total reform of the recruitment system including instituting a central jobs portal as we have proposed.