By Rob Irene joins the queue to get her height measured. She is in a group of about 10 new arrivals from the Philippines packed into a training room to take the Ministry of Manpower’s mandatory Settling In Programme for domestic maids. Irene arrived from Manila last night and joins a group of about 20
By Spiegel Saddled with debt and stripped of his livelihood, Rahim (not his real name) feels his life hanging in the balance. A wage dispute last month prompted Rahim’s Singaporean employer to revoke his work permit without warning, casting the 28-year-old Bangladeshi out in the cold. It’s a bitter blow for the sole breadwinner to
By Suresh A ride sitting at the back of a truck in May this year was all it took to change the fate of Kashem Abul for worse. He's been working in Singapore for a total of 13 years, albeit for different companies. Only three months into his job with a new employer, Kashem was
By Lee Kah Ghim If you witnessed a man being punched in the eye by another, would you render assistance? What if the victim were a foreign worker, someone who belonged to a category of individuals Singaporeans so frequently look down upon; would you still help? It was an apparent ‘no’ for the people at
A letter by TWC2 exco member Debbie Fordyce was published in the Straits Times 25 October 2012. She highlights the quite common problem of the government creating a bias against workers in favour of employers. Straits Times, 25 October 2012, Print Forum Foreign workers' medical dilemma Foreign workers often find themselves in a Catch-22 situation
Photographer Sam Chin will be showing works from his project “SuperHeroes” in a group exhibition at the National Museum on Stamford Road from 20 October to 27 December 2012. This exhibition is part of the Objectifs 10 years Shooting Home Anniversary. Sam explains: "SuperHeroes is an attempt to photograph various groups of migrant workers in
By Benjamin Wong Where do these out-of-job workers stay? This question is often asked. Hardly any of them are housed by their ex-employers, though in theory the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) expects employers to continue providing "upkeep and maintenance" until the worker is repatriated. But rare is the case when an employer actually does so.
Just this year alone, three workers came to the attention of Transient Workers Count Too with holes in their skulls resulting from workplace accidents (see story here). They needed cranioplasties -- reconstructing the missing part of the skull with synthetic material -- but who would pay for the operation? Their cases highlight a gap in
This year alone, Transient Workers Count Too came across three workers who had sustained head injuries. In dealing with the emergency, a part of their skulls had to be removed. With only soft skin covering the unprotected part of the brain, they were left exposed to future injuries. These three stories relate to the commentary,
Shah Ali didn't have much choice when his one-year work permit came to an end. Having paid an employment agent about S$4,400 to get this job for him a year ago, he had still not recovered the investment. If he didn't get his work permit renewed and continued in the job, he would be in
