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Both arms broken, worker needs help eating and showering
"Every day I coming," says Liton Hossain, describing how he has to travel after work each evening from his company's dormitory in Sungei Kadut to Desker Road in Little India. It's a journey of some 20 kilometres. "If I no coming, how he shower, how he makan [eat]?" The 'he'
Short-paid workers assert their claims, tell agent they know the law
By Fuxiong Five days after the three of them lodged a salary complaint with the Ministry of Manpower on 1 March 2013, they were summoned to the company office. They were each handed their passports and an airticket back to Bangladesh. Rowshan (at left in picture) protested to the foreman,
“I have worked here for eleven years already, but no day off still”
By Joyce Law and Geng Zhaochong We undertook some outreach for TWC2 recently, which involved talking to foreign domestic workers and finding out more about the challenges they face working in Singapore. Domestic workers play an increasingly important role in Singaporean households today due to the rise in dual-income families:
Invested his savings to land a job – that had neither work nor pay
By Davina Tham Imagine sleeping ten hours a night, watching TV and movies all day, and getting friends to pay for all your meals. Most people would call this heaven. But for Mahmudul Hasan, this was a lifestyle wracked with anxiety and frustration, waiting for the work and the salary
TWC2 volunteers organise maiden ‘Discovery’ to Gardens by the Bay
By TK Khurshed, a migrant worker who had injured his back eight months ago, shared bashfully: “I am going to write a letter and send the photos to my wife.” This would be his very first letter home after working in Singapore for three years! He wants to share this
“Don’t bother talking to my maid, she’s impossibly lazy”
By Gerald Lim, Lionel Ong and Marjorie Pang “Don’t bother talking to my maid. She knows absolutely nothing and is impossibly lazy” – the words of a Singapore employer, who wouldn’t allow us to speak to her Indonesian domestic worker as part of our survey. It speaks volumes. You can’t ignore
College mates in Punjab give strength to each other in Singapore
By Danielle The two make a striking pair – young men with slicked hair, tattoos and ear studs to boot. Pals from Khalsa College in Amritsar, in shirts and jeans, you would have mistaken them for undergraduates anywhere. Except that Manbir Singh (left) and Jhorar Hardeep Singh (right) aren’t in Singapore
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
Not one among 500 workers could read his IPA
"How many of you received the Chinese-language version of the letter from your employment agent?" asked TWC2 social worker Kenneth Soh soon after commencing his talk to Chinese workers. He was referring to the Ministry of Manpower's In-principle Approval for a Work Permit (IPA), a document that a worker had