By Nguyen Minh Quan “Mother must die”, says Muthu Chetty Murugesan when he shows me his injured left eye. What he means is his mother will be devastated when she learns that her son has lost an eye. He hasn't yet told anyone back home about the injury. "My country no one know," he says,
By Pan Chuen His livelihood depended on him being physically fit and able to shoulder heavy materials, but a worksite injury dashed those hopes. The only break in the dark clouds above him is a compensation pay-out from his employer. But what if the lawyer doesn't act promptly? Like many other Bangladeshi workers in Singapore,
By Peter Looker "Lawyer say you wait, you wait, you wait MC money" Atikur (not his real name) tells me, "but money no give". For four whole months now, Atikur, a worker from Bangladesh, has been waiting for "MC pay" accruing from the medical leave he was given for a serious and ongoing problem with
Several law firms specialising in work injury claims have offices in Little India By Nguyen Minh Quan To the question "How much do you have to pay your lawyer, how much is he going to charge you?" Gowri (not his real name) replies: "Charging, no talking." It is phrased in a way migrant workers
By Peter Looker Polash has no passport. He can't go home. "My boss, he say passport lost." His previous boss at Timberlux International Pte Ltd claimed not to have the passport. “Boss alibaba,” Polash alleges, using the shorthand term widely understood among migrant workers to mean 'untruthful'. What led up to this dispute has been written in
By Eitan He's been hobbling around with that boot and a crutch for four months already. Every day he goes up and down three floors to get his free meals provided by Transient Workers Count Too, each step presenting a risk of tumbling down. Unable to put weight on his broken right foot, he largely
By Elizabeth Zhou Cleanly shaven, he is dressed in a tight-fitting dark blue T-shirt that betrays a physique built by hard labour. A pair of trendy earphones is slung around his neck. It is my first time at Transient Workers Count Too's free meals point, known as The Cuff Road Project. I am unsure how
By Hui Zhen Manikandan was instructed to meet “boss” one day, after six days' absence from work, and told he would be fined $180 ($30 a day) for not being on the job. “Boss say, 'Don’t give story',” he exclaimed. He was then gripped by his shirt and told he'd be sent back to India.
By Fuxiong Some employers try to take advantage of a foreign worker's weak English. They present stacks of papers for the worker to sign, papers that he can't understand. All sorts of pressures are then applied on the worker to make him sign them, but doing so may prejudice his rights. Fortunately, Sohag Md Lowsar
By Pan Chuen Faced with an impossible situation filled with uncertainty, what would you do? Md Jamal Abdul Aziz Maji, 29, is a Bangladeshi worker who worked in Singapore for thirteen months before his patience over unpaid overtime ran out. Unhappy about an employee asserting his right to be paid, Jamal's boss cancelled his work
