By Elizabeth Zhou To trust is to place your vote of confidence in a person or organization, to believe in its reliability, and to be led to feel certain that s/he would honour an agreement. Bangladeshi national, Mofazzel Ukil Late Royjaddin Ukil, is no naïve rookie. But he thought he could trust his employer, ICII
The first hint was in the Phnom Penh Post: that Transient Workers Count Too was helping a domestic worker from Cambodia who said a member of the employer's family had sexually molested her. It's a relatively new pilot programme: bringing in domestic workers from Cambodia, and naturally there are many parties interested in watching how
By Nguyen Minh Quan “Mother must die”, says Muthu Chetty Murugesan when he shows me his injured left eye. What he means is his mother will be devastated when she learns that her son has lost an eye. He hasn't yet told anyone back home about the injury. "My country no one know," he says,
"Don't tell people address," says Kamal (not his real name). "I promise I won't," your writer assures him, honoured to be trusted enough by him and his room-mates to be shown the hovel where they live. We both know that this is illegal accommodation for foreign workers. But when workers are injured and in conflict
By Pan Chuen His livelihood depended on him being physically fit and able to shoulder heavy materials, but a worksite injury dashed those hopes. The only break in the dark clouds above him is a compensation pay-out from his employer. But what if the lawyer doesn't act promptly? Like many other Bangladeshi workers in Singapore,
With additional reporting by Chris Lee Eventually, the case ended in a rather unsatisfactory way. We can hardly fault Jalil Shaikh Bala Miah Shaikh, 27, for being frustrated with the outcome. His case shows how Singapore's work injury compensation system is stacked against migrant workers. Whenever an employer flatly denies to the authorities that an
By Peter Looker "Lawyer say you wait, you wait, you wait MC money" Atikur (not his real name) tells me, "but money no give". For four whole months now, Atikur, a worker from Bangladesh, has been waiting for "MC pay" accruing from the medical leave he was given for a serious and ongoing problem with
Several law firms specialising in work injury claims have offices in Little India By Nguyen Minh Quan To the question "How much do you have to pay your lawyer, how much is he going to charge you?" Gowri (not his real name) replies: "Charging, no talking." It is phrased in a way migrant workers
By Peter Looker Polash has no passport. He can't go home. "My boss, he say passport lost." His previous boss at Timberlux International Pte Ltd claimed not to have the passport. “Boss alibaba,” Polash alleges, using the shorthand term widely understood among migrant workers to mean 'untruthful'. What led up to this dispute has been written in
By Eitan He's been hobbling around with that boot and a crutch for four months already. Every day he goes up and down three floors to get his free meals provided by Transient Workers Count Too, each step presenting a risk of tumbling down. Unable to put weight on his broken right foot, he largely
