7 am on Saturday, 7 July 2012. Two heavily-tattooed Chinese men walked into a company dormitory and demanded that Md Mustakim Khan pack his belongings right away. "They say to me, 'Today your flight go home'," recalled the worker from Bangladesh. He protested that he had only just been given a 19-day medical certificate for
It was a warm night on the rooftop of Zsofi Tapas Bar last Sunday (29 July 2012) but all the guests -- numbering over a hundred -- had a good time. Transient Workers Count Too's fundraising and volunteer appreciation dinner went off with hardly a hitch, with an equal mix of donors and well-wishers, volunteers
By Benjamin Wong TWC2 treasurer Alex Au went down the line of men queuing up to get their meal coupons at the charity's soup kitchen. "Salary case or injury case?" he asked each man in turn. At random, he pulled out two men with salary cases, and asked them to sit with me to recount
Continued from part 2 This is the third of six parts: Rajeesh was the only one who knew anything about the city of Cotonou, Benin, and having gone out regularly he had picked up a working knowledge of French. At the beginning of their stay, Liady Furaimo’s African friends would shop for the Indian men,
By Arjun Naidu Mechanic Devadass Ganesamoorthy was having his lunch break when five or six Ministry of Manpower (MOM) officers raided the workshop in June. “They ask, 'Where permit?' and I give permit.” But although Devadass was a mechanic, he was listed as 'musician' on his work permit. “So they said, 'Eh you musician, what
By Benjamin Wong To the question 'Are you married?', Mohsin Howlander pauses, pursing his lips. “My wife, she die already,” he replies, fighting back tears. “Oh dear, how did that happen?” your TWC2 volunteer asks him. He switches from grief to anger, spitting out the words like a curse: “She die because of my faarker
In his nine months since arriving in Singapore, Habibur (not his real name) has been scolded – verbally and physically – threatened with his life, exploited, beaten and forced to lie to the MOM. As a teacher in his native Bangladesh, Habibur could expect, on top of regular work, a modicum of respect. He arrived in Singapore
Continued from part 1. This is the second of six parts: Looking forward to a bright new future, Sellathurai Boominathan embarked on a journey, early January 2011, that should eventually take him to Canada. He had heard that work there would pay C$10.00 (S$12.50) per hour. He was aware however that the plan required him
We heard a faint knock at the door around 2pm on Saturday afternoon as I tapped away on my laptop; I was here in TWC2's office to edit some photos for the website. Mr Ho, an older Singaporean, looked like he had stumbled upon the wrong place: Golden Mile Complex with its network of offices
‘Signing on the dotted line: examining operational indicators of trafficking’ is a two part article written by TWC2’s immediate past president, John Gee, for the website of The Trafficking Research Project (TTRP), and published in June and July 2012. The first part of the article is on contract abuse, where companies have tried to impose
