18 Nov 2013, Monday evening A small group of five men approach TWC2 executive committee members Debbie Fordyce and Alex Au at our free meals location in Little India, telling us that they've not been paid and have lost their jobs. Two more workers arrive and Alex sits down with all seven of them to
Mozumder nearly died. He was inches away from falling six floors. Then the Ministry of Manpower wanted to send him to jail, accused of lying about the accident. Today he is a free man, very thankful to Transient Workers Count Too and to pro-bono lawyers Nicole Wee and Joanna Goh of TSMP Law Corporation. The
By Fuxiong "Now you see, my finger swollen," says Arangulavan Sri Ram, "but no more appointment at Mount E." Mount Elizabeth Hospital at Novena was where he had been treated post-accident, but with no further follow-up appointments scheduled, Ram went to Tan Tock Seng Hospital instead last week. Two fingers on his right hand have
Afzal first came to the attention of Transient Workers Count Too on 22 March 2013, six days after being assaulted by a Thai worker wielding a beer bottle. Just looking at Afzal, you wouldn’t know that anything was seriously wrong. You'd spot a black eye, with a little blood in the white of the eye,
By Davina Tham When injured workers come to Transient Workers Count Too, the sorry tales they bring are usually about trying to get proper medical treatment and difficulty in getting reluctant employers to foot the bills as they should by law. Rarely is there someone like Lakshmanan Sasikumar, whose employer seems to have checked all
By Shahnaz What does Mattaparthi Kumaraswamy have to show for the six years he has worked? Very little. When he goes back to India, he will have no savings, hardly any prospect of a job, yet there's an extended family to feed. Has he seen the sights of Singapore, gone shopping in Orchard, taken a holiday? The
An incentive to promote work safety backfired on Boomi Murugan. He was not allowed to see a doctor immediately after an injury because, according to the worker, the assistant manager wanted to win the annual award. Murugan worked for a hydrojetting company. Although he had a face shield on, five tiny metal pellets ricochetted into
By Marifel Mosquera Teresita (Terry) is the newly hired helper of Lim Family from the Province of Iloilo in the Philippines. Like most of the women who come to Singapore as domestic workers, she is looking to better her life and climb out of poverty. The film is about her relationship and struggle with one
By TK “The students had a blast!" said Professor Anju Mary Paul. "Their interactions with the workers both in Little India and today have fundamentally changed their views about migrant workers in Singapore.” Paul is from Yale-NUS College's Division of Social Sciences, and was speaking to TWC2 after the college hosted a visit by migrant
By Benjamin Wong Arumugam Ramachandran first came to Singapore four years ago. For three years Ramachandran worked injury free, but seven months ago, during a routine construction job, Ramachandran injured his knee. At first, he was unwilling to report it, and tried to carry on working, hoping the pain would go away eventually. For the
