By Mayank Tripathi “Why should I go to a dentist for a broken foot?" exclaims a visibly weary Md Sultan Khan, when he begins telling me his story. About a year ago, Sultan, an employee of Sino Marine & Engineering, incurred an injury while at his workplace in Keppel shipyard. He was initially treated at
Most times, when TWC2 volunteers interview workers, the conversation tends to focus on the immediate problem he or she faces, be it an injury needing proper medical attention, unpaid salaries, or a job scam. Suman Barman has an injury too, to his right thumb, but he was also a good case study of someone who
By Jacintha Gopal Narayanasamy Arulmurugan (Arul) has in hand a formal order issued by a Labour Court ordering his employer to pay him $18,276.42 in owed salary. But he is facing the stark possibility that he’d soon be told by the Ministry of Manpower to buy his own ticket and go home to India without
By Sonia Pillai Quite early in the interview, Palani Srinivasan, 43, mentions that his lawyer has told him to go home after his third operation. “Let me do collection for you,” was what (according to Srinivasan) his lawyer said. TWC2 vice-president Alex Au, who is sitting beside me, thinks it rather strange. "His WICA process
By Fuxiong Torikul's hoped-for second job in Singapore never materialised. Instead, he's $4,500 in the red, having paid this total sum to an 'agent' and the boss. Getting it back is going to be difficult. He borrowed this amount from his father-in-law, who mortgaged his small plot of farmland to raise the money for him.
By Joyce Wong Confronted by enforcers, Arif fled the dorm for his own safety. He left all his belongings behind. On 18 Jan 2014, fifteen days after a section of a finger was cut off by a cement mixer during work, Arif Hossin Chan Miah received a phone call from Zainuddin (not his real name),
Vallathan Kowthaman is going home end January 2014. He has no reason to smile as broadly as he does in the photo above, being about $6,000 poorer than when we arrived for his second job in March 2013. But he gives us a big smile because TWC2 has been his lifeline since he was injured,
By Benjamin Wong The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) website states that for a worker to claim under the Work Injury Compensation Act (WICA), "the employee only needs to prove that he was injured in a work accident ..." (emphasis added by TWC2). In reality, many workers have difficulty even meeting this supposedly simple condition, because
By Keith W Nazim Chowdhury shows me a three-page document he printed out. It's the formal accident report that his employer provided to the Ministry of Manpower (MOM). The incident was described in the document thus: That he "... with a co-worker was tasked to remove a beam at the location. While handling the beam,
Continued from Woolim, part 1: How low can a salary get? Early January 2014, Iqbal comes to the office with a group of his co-workers telling us that three of the fifteen men have accepted a settlement offer from the employer Woolim, wherein each of them would receive $2,000. This, says Iqbal, is a far
