All Articles
Happily wed, unhappily stranded
Roy Mithu suffered four months of salary non-payment. He reckons the employer owes him $11,000. But as he tells our volunteer writer, the expected recovery amount gets whittled down for one reason or another. Will he be going home with any money at all?
The circumstances of being a foreign worker must be considered, says judge
Duraiarasan injured his right eye on 15 January 2016. at work. He did not see a doctor until January 19th. The employer seemed to have argued that no accident happened on the 15th and MOM dismissed the worker's injury claim.
$8,000 for the underground agent
Foreign workers are increasingly becoming illegal job agents, preying on fellow countrymen like Alamin wanting to come to Singapore. This underground activity puts Singapore's law and order reputation at risk.
Foreign workers’ lives of waiting
Two Bangladeshi workers tell us about waiting. Waiting to get overtime wages, waiting to get claims settled through MOM. But waiting is not painless.
How do workers raise money to pay agents?
TWC2 volunteer Stefan dives deep into issues of loans, pawning, interest rates and repayment installments. Compared to the meagre salaries foreign workers in low-skill jobs earn, the numbers are disturbing.
Maid to Last? Foreign domestic workers’ access to weekly rest days
In this newly-released study, TWC2 found that domestic workers had to "prove" themselves and learn to negotiate for their days off. Generally, it takes over four years before they can get two rest days per month.
The outlaw ocean – human trafficking and other crimes, part 3
Ian Urbina, an investigative reporter for the New York Times, spent years researching the abuses in Southeast Asia's fishing industry. In the above video, he visits a detention centre in Indonesia where he meets with (mostly Vietnamese) men who had been detained when their fishing
The outlaw ocean – human trafficking and other crimes, part 2
The video in this post has investigative journalist Ian Urbina trying to track down alleged murderers and human traffickers in the Thai fishing industry.
The outlaw ocean – human trafficking and other crimes, part 1
Here's a heads-up to a forthcoming book The Outlaw Ocean by Ian Urbina, following his years-long investigation of labour abuses and human trafficking in the fishing industry.
How some employers cheat both the government and workers
In June a year ago, we wrote about the Everglory scam. It's not confined to Everglory Construction Pte Ltd but is in fact quite a common scam. Since the first cases emerged in early 2018, Transient Workers Count Too has seen a new case every few days. The