By Benjamin Wong TWC2 treasurer Alex Au went down the line of men queuing up to get their meal coupons at the charity's soup kitchen. "Salary case or injury case?" he asked each man in turn. At random, he pulled out two men with salary cases, and asked them to sit with me to recount

Continued from part 2 This is the third of six parts: Rajeesh was the only one who knew anything about the city of Cotonou, Benin, and having gone out regularly he had picked up a working knowledge of French. At the beginning of their stay, Liady Furaimo’s African friends would shop for the Indian men,

By Arjun Naidu Mechanic Devadass Ganesamoorthy was having his lunch break when five or six Ministry of Manpower (MOM) officers raided the workshop in June. “They ask, 'Where permit?' and I give permit.” But although Devadass was a mechanic, he was listed as 'musician' on his work permit. “So they said, 'Eh you musician, what

By Benjamin Wong To the question 'Are you married?', Mohsin Howlander pauses, pursing his lips. “My wife, she die already,” he replies, fighting back tears. “Oh dear, how did that happen?” your TWC2 volunteer asks him. He switches from grief to anger, spitting out the words like a curse: “She die because of my faarker

In his nine months since arriving in Singapore, Habibur (not his real name) has been scolded – verbally and physically – threatened with his life, exploited, beaten and forced to lie to the MOM. As a teacher in his native Bangladesh, Habibur could expect, on top of regular work, a modicum of respect. He arrived in Singapore

Continued from part 1. This is the second of six parts: Looking forward to a bright new future, Sellathurai Boominathan embarked on a journey, early January 2011, that should eventually take him to Canada. He had heard that work there would pay C$10.00 (S$12.50) per hour. He was aware however that the plan required him

We heard a faint knock at the door around 2pm on Saturday afternoon as I tapped away on my laptop; I was here in TWC2's office to edit some photos for the website. Mr Ho, an older Singaporean, looked like he had stumbled upon the wrong place: Golden Mile Complex with its network of offices

I got a call last week from a maid who works in Little India named Josie. She approached me in my capacity as a writer for TWC2 as she wanted to share her story. Josie, who is from Abra province in the Philippines and heralds from a family of seven, has worked in Singapore since

It by no means applies to all migrants we talk to at TWC2, but anger simmers very close to the surface in some of the men we encounter. Not all. Most are unbelievably patient and humble while waiting for the slow, ponderous wheels of bureaucracy to turn. But Akkabar isn’t one of those men. I

This is the first of six parts: The house in Pattukottai, Tamil Nadu, is unfinished, with reinforced steel bars poking out from the flat concrete roof. There are walls, ceiling, and floors of rough concrete, windows and doorways with frames, but no windows or doors, water or fixtures. It provides shelter from the elements but boasts