Shah Alam hopes to go home soon. It's better than staying on in Singapore, sleeping on the streets. "Now raining season, got big problem for me," he says. "Even at night not raining, floor also wet." To wash himself each day, he depends on the kindness of a restaurant owner in Little India. "Over
By Benjamin Wong Ilias Mir Anisur (above left) and Badal Barai (right) are part of the third group of workers from the same company, Lian Shing Construction Co Pte Ltd, to approach TWC2 for help. Despite so many workers lodging complaints with the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) over a 12-month period, the company is still
By Nigel Lin He gives us a big smile now, but in the evening of 12 May 2012, he lay writhing in pain after a nasty fall off the top rungs of his ladder -- a scene like this and you would expect this poor soul to be receiving medical attention immediately. Not for Fasal
By Asha R He came to make a living, but ended up thousands of dollars poorer. Rony Nurul Islam, 36, is a quiet man with an easy smile, but get him talking about how he ended up in TWC2's soup kitchen, and the frustration starts pouring out of him. Rony came to Singapore in July
For the first time as far as anyone in TWC2 can remember, the government has revealed how much it collects each year in foreign worker levies. Every employer who hires a foreign worker in Singapore has to pay a monthly levy based on a prevailing scale of charges. To a parliamentary question by Gan Thiam
Anowar Hossain (above right) was financially desperate ten months after the accident at his worksite. He had been terminated from his shipyard job and received no income since. To pay for food and lodgings, he relied on borrowing. At some point, even friends and relatives tired of lending money without end. Despite having suffered a
By Benjamin Wong It is seven in the evening. The crowd at the TWC2's Cuff Road meal project starts to pick up and workers slowly stream towards the restaurant. They wait in queue, decked out in varied attire -- some are in jeans, others in bermudas, with their t-shirts and polo-tees. Among them, one man
Uzzal’s injury happened like this. On 9 June 2010, he was working on a project in an HDB flat, hacking away floor and wall tiles in a bathroom. The vibration from the hacking machine caused his safety glasses to slip off allowing a chip of tiling to rocket into his right eye. He experienced immediate
In this video, Today newspaper interviewed two Bangladeshi workers suffering because they are receiving no income, when they have borrowed money to come here. Below is a transcription of what's said in the video that was uploaded onto Youtube on 4 January 2013. The accent can be quite thick and to help viewers, we've added
Researcher Sallie Yea gave a talk on Tuesday, 8 January 2013, launching her preliminary report on human trafficking in the fishing industry. The event was organised by Transient Workers Count Too. To an audience of about 30 persons from embassies, government and media, she spoke about her study of 63 cases of Filipino fishermen who
