"At the [agency] office, every morning, we must clean the office," says Mary Grace Pescador, 31, a domestic helper from the Philippines, "and from 10am to 1am -- i.e. past midnight -- we have to stand. As punishment." The six women were being punished by their employment agent because the employers they had been assigned
Within about a week of arriving in Singapore in early January 2013 to take up his welder job, Aminul discovered that the $6,000 (Bangladesh Taka 390,000) he had paid in Bangladesh as "employment agent's fee" was far higher than the norm. "I ask other worker how much they give for agent money," he tells TWC2,
Riya was sentenced to three weeks in jail in June this year for twice submitting false documents to the Ministry of Manpower (MOM). She had no clue that she had committed the offence. Her life fell apart in October 2012 when her employer suddenly took her to MOM with her documents in a bag --
Nearly one in three work accidents might not have been reported to the authorities due to doctors in private practice under-issuing medical leave, a TWC2 survey has found. Only because the worker subsequently makes his way to a public hospital does he get enough medical leave to make it a reportable incident. The Workman's Injury
The two guys showed up at our office looking for help with accommodation and money for food. But they didn't look at all like the workers we usually see from China. Recalls Kenneth Soh, TWC2's social worker, "They were very fair, smooth-skinned and good-looking, completely different from the sunburnt construction workers we normally see." A
"He needs to be around somebody at all hours," says Debbie Fordyce, co-ordinator of TWC2's Cuff Road Project. "The epileptic fit can come at any time, and someone needs to catch him to make sure he doesn't fall and hurt himself." Fortunately, TWC2 has hundreds of workers on our register at any one time, idled
"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' is his nephew. Like so
"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 to have in hand upon
Zhang Bo (left), Zhao Shougui (middle) and Wang Qingshan (right) thought they had a simple problem when they came to Transient Workers Count Too. However, when we looked into their case, it became obvious that there were complications. In fact, the men may be luckier than they realised. Things could have turned out much worse
Soon after returning to his quarters after work on the evening of 23 February 2013, Shoriful's supervisor Ujjal showed up with a fellow worker Jakir in tow. With an aggressive tone of voice, Ujjal confronted Shoriful. "He say to me," reports Shoriful, "'Who your father in Singapore? He in MOM? He in police?' like that."
