Most men from Bangladesh dress quite conservatively. Compared to his compatriots, Sohel, standing at our front door, flashed a lot of skin. Your writer remarked to himself: This guy is halfway to becoming Singaporean. When Sohel opened his mouth, more proof flowed. He was fluent in Singlish. It turned out that for the better part of
Most times, when TWC2 volunteers interview workers, the conversation tends to focus on the immediate problem he or she faces, be it an injury needing proper medical attention, unpaid salaries, or a job scam. Suman Barman has an injury too, to his right thumb, but he was also a good case study of someone who
Vallathan Kowthaman is going home end January 2014. He has no reason to smile as broadly as he does in the photo above, being about $6,000 poorer than when we arrived for his second job in March 2013. But he gives us a big smile because TWC2 has been his lifeline since he was injured,
Continued from Woolim, part 1: How low can a salary get? Early January 2014, Iqbal comes to the office with a group of his co-workers telling us that three of the fifteen men have accepted a settlement offer from the employer Woolim, wherein each of them would receive $2,000. This, says Iqbal, is a far
Junnuri Subrahmanyam's flight was booked for the evening. He wanted a day off on his last day in Singapore so he could go downtown to buy gifts for this family. He had been working four years with Sin Hong Thai Engineering and was looking forward to going home. But instead of being on a plane
Whenever we have a new story about a worker, we tend to put a link to it on TWC2's Facebook wall. Most of our stories tell about workers' experience with salary defaults or the frustrations that follow a workplace injury. Once in a while, we see a comment by a reader on our Facebook wall
Hossain Mohamed Dulal holds up his cellphone and shows us a a picture that he took of his left hand. It's bandaged after surgery, but his thumb is a sapphire blue. He says that day his boss "catch my hand and squeeze" it. "Very, very pain," he says of that moment. "I cry". It doesn't
Hossain Iqbel's IPA states a basic monthly salary of $800, but for a year, he's been paid a basic of only $1.50 an hour (equivalent to $286 a month). The 'IPA' is the In-principle Approval for a Work Permit, a letter issued by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) to employer and employee prior to the
"Meeting time, they speak all very nicely," recalls Neelakandan of a meeting at his company office on Tuesday, 22 October 2013. Present were "boss wife", a Chinese Singaporean, a manager and an engineer, both Sri Lankans. They -- Neelakandan's superiors -- asked him for details about the incident on Sunday morning, when his supervisors got
The scab on one of Das Thiru's knees about three weeks after the accident Continued from PART 'The employers believe these workers exaggerate their injuries to fool doctors' – so reported the Straits Times on 9 November 2013 (‘Hospitals give too much sick leave for injuries: Bosses’ by Amelia Tan) Is this true?
