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

"Look, my hand like this, cannot move," said Moriddul. His fingers could move, but he couldn't flex or rotate his wrist. "When did this happen?" your writer asked him. October 2011, he said. He was a "supplied worker", seconded by his boss to another contractor's construction site. On the fateful day, he was collecting tools

Everything was wrong about Majid's job except one thing: he was earning the kind of money he had hoped for, and he was being paid on time. Having invested about $4,400 in recruiting agent's fees to land the job in Singapore, now making $900 to $950 a month meant that he should be able to

Until February this year Anis worked inside a large coal tanker; he would spend around 10 hours in its guts with five men for company, a power hose and the toxic fumes of anti-corrosive paint with which they coated the walls. Anis’ story isn’t unusual. As a plumber by trade, he was ecstatic to be