Articles > Facts, Research, Analysis
Nearly half of workers interviewed paid agents before getting confirmation of jobs
Three of the eighteen workers interviewed in our straw poll By Wang Ting It is a chilly, drizzly evening. A crowd of people, mostly foreign workers from India and Bangladesh, swamp the registration desk of Transient Workers Count Too's free meal service. There's a lot of talking, making
The Lives of Others – an investigation into the issues faced by S-Pass holders
This is an investigative report by Jamie Lin Weirong, based on interviews with five S-Pass holders, originally from the Philippines. They work in different trades: retail, catering, and project design and management, but together they sketch out the issues faced by S-Pass holders. These include a difficult-to-understand hiring process, an
Migrant dreams extinguished on the road
Two months, before he was due to leave Singapore, Mahalingam Rajesh was looking forward to marrying his fiancee and starting afresh in his homeland. Moving back to India, his dream was to set up a fish farm and settle down – a world away from the dusty construction sites he’d
Slow start to male domestic workers
The Sunday Times featured a newly-hired male domestic worker from Myanmar on its 12 May 2013 edition. 31-year-old Lum Hkawng comes from Kachin state in northern Myanmar. The former steel welder, who speaks Mandarin, is working for a partially-handicapped man in his 50s who was injured in a traffic accident.
Minimum wage will reduce temptation of illegal work
We usually write about the situations that bring workers to Transient Workers Count Too's Cuff Road Food Programme — injury, salary dispute, etc — but seldom about what they do to sustain themselves once their work permits are cancelled and they're put on special passes. A condition of the special
Why are Singapore mums demonising maids online?
All it takes is one bad experience and an internet connection to start venting your spleen against a maid. Or eight in the case of one blogger. ‘Employing a Maid in Singapore’ was conceived to offer support to "employers who have suffered at the hands of bad maids". It is
Workers with gloomy anniversaries
Nagaraju Ramakrishnan Raju has been waiting twenty months since his injury. A small piece of metal flew into the right eye of the 34-year-old construction worker in June 2011. He had four months of treatment at Tan Tock Seng Hospital before it was decided that he really needed an operation.
Direct Services Report for 2010 and 2011
Periodically, Transient Workers Count Too produces a Direct Services Report, summarising the help we render to migrant workers. Help takes various forms, including advice through a toll-free helpline, intervention and case management and a free meals programme. The 18-page Report for the years 2010 and 2011 can be downloaded by
Cuff Road Project 2012: Statistics
The Cuff Road Food Programme is Transient Workers Count Too’s signature project. Not only does it address a critical need among workers who have been abandoned and left destitute, it offers an important contact point between the organisation and those in need of help. Workers not only get a hot
Who eats with The Cuff Road Project and why?
The Cuff Road Project (TCRP) has provided more than 360,000 meals to migrant workers since it began in March 2008. The eligibility criterion for admission into the meal programme is that a worker must be out of a job due to injury, dispute with his employer or similar reason. They