"You did Spit onto a Public Place (Drain)" -- this was the awkward and legalistic way Imran’s Notice to Attend Court described his offence. How was he to know that spitting in a drain by the side of the road was wrong? “No person shall spit any substance or expel mucus from the nose upon
By Seema Punwani "I cannot go back! If I go back I die. I die". Rahman keeps repeating in his broken English. His friend who is kindly acting as a translator tries to calm him down and entreats him to explain his predicament in detail. And so begins Rahman's story -- sadly not very unlike
Four months after employees of Genius Engineering and related companies lodged salary complaints with the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), Mouazzam Hossin (pictured above) is still in Singapore, struggling to get something out of what he is owed. Mouazzam is among the last of the workers still here. Nearly all the rest -- there were altogether
By Meera Rajah Yati (not her real name) was promised that she would only have to wait in Batam for a week, before returning to Singapore to work with a new employer. The week became a month, and the month eventually turned into a year. Her previous employer had “scream[ed] and throw the things then
By Walter Wadiak As I sit down to do my first interview with a migrant worker, I’m looking for problems. Perhaps a story about an uncompensated injury — I have already seen plenty of these in my few visits here. Maybe I will find a man whose meagre salary has been either underpaid or not
By Fuxiong In the minutes following his three-metre fall, with his right shin and back in pain, Hossian Ramzan was carried by two "tamil man" on the instructions of a company supervisor to a shipping container, "to rest". "Then they lock the door." It worried him, but at first he gave them the benefit of
By Lauri When she came down to meet us for the first time, "she had only a small bag containing her documents," Karno recalls. "She didn't even have her clothes and things." TWC2 social worker Karno and a volunteer were waiting at the foot of an HDB block of flats to rescue Indonesian domestic worker
It is still October 2014. Chodawre Badal doesn't say much, but just shows your writer a letter from the National University Hospital (NUH) giving him an assessment date for 8 May 2015, seven months away. 'Assessment' is the stage when a worker, following a work injury, is assessed for residual permanent incapacity, so that an
By Keith Wong "He do nothing," says Tariqul of his lawyer. Tariqul's medical assessment was "more than three months" ago, and he's been waiting to hear how many "points" (a measure of permanent disability) has been awarded for his leg injury. But his lawyer keeps on telling him to "wait, wait". That's the same answer
By Eitan After a year of volunteering, I can now spot a new guy at our soup kitchen with little difficulty. Unlike the 'regulars' who know the drill -- present a meal card, sign into the registration book, get a token -- and who also engage in some banter with TWC2 volunteers, the new ones
