All items filed under News
Kuwait revamps recruitment companies for domestic workers, raises workers’ rights
Kuwait's legislature passed two new laws recently to improve the conditions of domestic workers. One of the laws sets up a new type of company for recruiting domestic workers to replace the private companies that currently recruit domestic helpers. The new type of company cannot take any payments from the recruited
Ensure pay is banked, offer (job) mobility
Published in the Straits Times Forum, 17 June 2015: --- FOREIGN WORKERS' WAGE WOES Ensure pay is banked, offer mobility Sunday's report ("More foreign workers seek help over wage woes") mentioned that the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) will be making it mandatory for employers to issue itemised payslips next year.
MOM to require salary slips from 2016?
Buried within a news story in the Sunday Times (More foreign workers seek help over wage woes, 14 June 2015) was this sentence: Next year, employers must issue itemised payslips and provide written key employment terms, to prevent salary disputes, MOM said. A check at the ministry's website does not
TWC2 submits UPR shadow report to UN Human Rights
Once in four years, each member state of the United Nations is subject to peer review with respect to its human rights record. The Singapore government will appear before this process, known as Universal Periodic Review (UPR), in Geneva, in January 2016. In the lead-up to this process, the UN
Straits Times: Workers lose savings in fire at dorm
Photo from Straits Times, Desmond Foo A fire destroyed a workers' dormitory in Choa Chu Kang on Thursday 11 June 2015. This was reported in the Straits Times the day after. The fire was extinguished within an hour, but three firefighters were hurt. The newspaper reported: The dormitory
Today newspaper reports on our ‘day off’ findings
Today newspaper devoted a full page to our newly-released research report on weekly day off for domestic workers. Of the 195 respondents surveyed by the non-governmental organisation from July 2013 to October last year, only 41 per cent said they had four rest days each month. Close to a quarter
The Right to Rest: The effectiveness of the ‘day off’ legislation for foreign domestic workers
Government legislation has helped improve foreign domestic workers’ access to compensation in lieu of a day off, but 59% of foreign domestic workers in Singapore still do not get a weekly day off. To mark International Domestic Workers’ Day (16 June 2015), Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2) publishes a new
Direct Services Report for 2014
2014 marked Transient Workers Count Too's tenth year. It was also a year in which the number of meals served at The Cuff Road Project (our food programme for destitute migrant workers) since its launch in 2008 crossed the 500,000 mark. For the first time, we were regularly able to shelter
More than 5,000 submitted forged certificates between 2012 and 2014
In a blogpost, Manpower minister Lim Swee Say said "Between 2012 and 2014, more than 5,000 foreigners were barred from working in Singapore for life, for submitting forged academic certificates to obtain work passes. " The main point of the post was to explain how his ministry handles cases of
Retiree guilty of hitting, pouring bleach on maid
Lum Wai Lui, 74, pleaded guilty to two charges on 13 May 2015 of abusing a domestic worker in the family home. She had slapped and poured bleach on Filipina Jonna Memeje Muegue, 25, as 'punishment'. The domestic worker had been accused of eating a salmon meal that was not