Meet Lovelu (L) and Lemon (R), two of the many migrant workers who came to TWC2 in April after not having been paid the salaries. Photographs by Nguyen Phi Yen, from an evening in April 2018 Every weekday evening, volunteers with Transient Workers Count Too are there on the streets in front of
The number of Work Permit holders in the construction sector declined by nearly 10% between end-2016 and end-2017, latest figures on foreign workforce numbers show. There were 284,900 construction Work Permit holders end-2017 compared to 315,500 of them end-2016. It's a reduction of over 30,000. This mirrors the 8.4% contraction in construction industry GDP in
By Alston Ng, based on an interview in March 2018 It has been 18 years since Ganapathi Alaguraja first arrived in Singapore as a foreign worker, but his impeccable record of accident-free workdays came to an end when a spinning drill-bit crushed a finger on 1 March. Despite the years of experience living and working
Member of Parliament Louis Ng put in an oral question for oral answer on 19 February 2018, on the topic of injury reporting. Sam Tan, the Minister of State for Manpower replied on behalf of the minister. Nominated Member of Parliament K Thanaletchimi also contributed a supplementary question during the debate. See too TWC2's comment
A TWC2 research volunteer recently unearthed some interesting statistics regarding workplace injuries in the construction industry. Compared to other industrialised nations, the ratio of construction injury to overall injury rate and the ratio of construction injuries to fatalities is relatively low in Singapore. In the construction sector, the ratio of injuries to fatalities was 82:1 for Singapore in 2015. This
By Sun Hanchen, based on an interview in January 2018 I wrote about Rajan (not his real name) in an earlier story "Worker asks for reimbursement of medical bills, sets off chain of events". In this story, I will recount his work history, to give readers a glimpse into a foreign worker's experience in Singapore through
By Aaron Chua, based on interviews conducted in March 2018 At Transient Workers Count Too, we are mostly dealing with cases of salary and injury problems, but what do the day-to-day affairs of an average migrant worker look like? We got a glimpse of how their meals were managed when we recently interviewed a couple
About ten months after Subra broke his hip, the doctor said it was time to take the metal plate and screws out. His bones had fused well. It would mean a second operation. Subra rather liked the security of having the metal pieces in place; who knows what would happen if they were taken out?
By Sun Hanchen, based on an interview in January 2018 Some months after the accident in September 2016, Rajan (not his real name) was back at work on Jurong Island, albeit instructed by the doctor to undertake only “light duties”. One morning in April 2017, heading to his worksite, he was informed by a colleague
Marking the first anniversary of the new system for salary disputes, the State Courts issued a media statement on 24 April 2018 providing some statistics about the cases they handled during the first twelve months. From 1 April 2017 to 31 March 2018, the Employment Claims Tribunals (ECT), a unit within the State Courts, saw
