Sarowar (not his real name) approaches our help desk hesitantly. Despite being in his mid-thirties, he does not exude much self-confidence. Maybe it's because he knows his English is weak, and what he has to tell us is fairly complicated. However, it didn't take us long to grasp the nub of the problem: Someone had
File picture. Does not depict the restaurant in the article. By Liang Lei, based on an interview in July 2017 The raid came. Subbas was on duty that night, and he was arrested. His luck had run out. He would spend a month in jail and, tied to a medieval rack, receive three
By Jonah Foong, based on interviews in July 2017 In George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, the fictional land of Oceania is ruled by Big Brother, a man of ‘about forty-five’ with a ‘heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features’. While his face is plastered on hoardings, he is never seen in the flesh, and his
A boss was apologetic that he was unable to pay his employees their salaries on time. But what is interesting is the reason why he couldn't do so: he had to pay foreign worker levies to the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) first. Below are key portions of a transcript of a meeting between the boss (who
By Troy Lee based on an interview in July 2017 In the early hours of Friday, 7 July 2017, Md Raiful Islam touched down at Changi airport, looking forward to start on a new job. By midday, he was devastated. The job did not exist. He had paid about 465,000 Bangladeshi taka (about S$8,000) for
By Wahid Al Mamun based on an interview late July 2017 A lot of things can happen in two months, and Mollah Showrov has learned this the hard way. His right leg is now in held immobile in an orthopaedic boot. I notice how gingerly he seats himself in the plastic chair beside me. Here
Transient Workers Count Too came across a very interesting statement by Mr Tan Khim Long, director of KBC Engineering Pte Ltd. The company was defending a salary claim by a former employee, a Bangladeshi named Showkat, for short-payment of salary. The case was heard by the Manpower Ministry's Labour Court in late 2016 and early
By Namgay Choden, based on an interview in July 2017 With me this evening is Howlader Mohammod Selim, and he tells me about what happened in September 2016. Selim had suffered an accident at work, and was brought to Ng Teng Fong Hospital in Jurong East. After treatment, the doctor asked Selim whether he needed
On 23 June 2017, we put up a post on Facebook that said: This is Jafar Ahmmad. He came in 2014 to work for Harri Engineering. His boss, Nallusamy Narayanan accused him and other workers of taking their pay and not showing up for work. As it turns out, his boss was later jailed for
By Liang Lei, based on an interview in June 2017 What would you do if you think that your job constitutes a breach of safety regulations? For foreign workers, even having a choice of action is regrettably often a luxury. The consequence of disobeying supervisors’ orders, however unsafe, can be the sack. As a result, many
