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Ball retrievers sent out of bounds
Everything was wrong about Majid's job except one thing: he was earning the kind of money he had hoped for, and he was being paid on time. Having invested about $4,400 in recruiting agent's fees to land the job in Singapore, now making $900 to $950 a month meant that
Anis the plumber: sentenced to clean an Australian coal tanker
Until February this year Anis worked inside a large coal tanker; he would spend around 10 hours in its guts with five men for company, a power hose and the toxic fumes of anti-corrosive paint with which they coated the walls. Anis’ story isn’t unusual. As a plumber by trade,
Johir’s going home, minus one good hand
His left hand is now a stiff claw; it's not going to help him earn a living ever again. He is only 26 years old, according to his passport. Fifteen months ago, on January 9, 2011, Johir was at work on a construction site switching or attaching some parts to
Money-minting paradise
Vikram (not his real name) came to Transient Workers Count Too regarding an injury for which his boss was reluctant to provide proper medical care. But that's not what this story is about. Just to make sure that at least other aspects of his working life were in order, we
Bad news day at galvanising factory
In Mohamed and Bilal have gone is the story of two of 56 men laid off because their employer reportedly failed to pay the government's foreign worker levy. When so many workers are affected, several groups of men come to Transient Workers Count Too at different times. They end up speaking to
Cat on velvet
This senior gentleman is scrutinising the back of Debbie Fordyce's name card. He's probably wondering: What exactly does this woman do? What mischief does she get up to? Meanwhile, she's seated less than two metres away, smiling politely, but silent as a cat on velvet – as the saying goes.
Welcome to our private hell: 30 men, 4 beds
Last November, Minister of State for Manpower Tan Chuan-jin involved himself personally in a raid conducted against substandard accommodation for foreign workers. In a Facebook post, the minister described the conditions he saw as “abysmal.” I visited Mohamed’s and Bilal's house before they were sent home to Bangladesh this week – they told me
Mohamed and Bilal have gone: 56 workers follow as company is sanctioned by MOM
We at Transient Workers Count Too spend a lot of time talking and counseling men who are desperate to stay and work in Singapore, trying to find out how their cases are progressing and what can be done to help them come to terms with an often brutal bureaucracy. Regular readers
Mr Xu calls our hotline: “I am being sent home tonight.”
5:30 pm. Our social workers Kenneth Soh and Raymond Ang were tidying up their desks -- not to go home, but to set off to Little India where Transient Workers Count Too's soup kitchen operates. Then the phone rang. A worker, speaking in Chinese, introduced himself and said he had
Toothache as existential crisis
By Xinlin Basir Ullah is a stout man with an easy smile. However, when he came to TWC2 last Tuesday, it was not a smile but a face contorted in pain that we saw. He had a bad toothache in his right jaw which had been troubling him for the