Short notes expressing TWC2’s position on various issues. Letters to the editor and other instances of public and media engagement.
Following a letter from AWARE about poor enforcement of court orders, TWC2 wrote to the Straits Times Forum highlighting the same issue.
A new Work Injury Compensation Act was passed in Parliament on 3 September 2019. TWC2 comments on some key statements reported in the media. To make the new law work, administrative and process weaknesses must also be addressed.
In this research study, TWC2 found that about 80% of South Asian workers were "repeat workers", a huge change from a few years ago. We also found that about half of them used a Singapore-based job broker to find a job. Typically, these are foreign workers themselves, not licensed employment agents. It's illicit but profitable.
Transient Workers Count Too notes that the new Regulations (with effect from April 2017) subsidiary to the revised Employment of Foreign Manpower Act (2012), contain two clauses that make employers' responsibility more explicit. These are among other changes in the new Regulations. These two clauses are found in Part III of the Fourth Schedule of
Joint statement by the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE), the Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (HOME) and Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2) issued 11 November 2015. Recently, the media has discussed the camera surveillance of domestic workers by employers. Reports state (and our experience tells us) that this includes the use of
The United Nations' Global Compact for Migration (GCM) was adopted by a great majority of UN members on 10 December 2018 at a conference in Marrakech, Morocco. It was endorsed by the General Assembly on 19 December 2018, where 152 countries voted in favour. Five countries voted against -- the Czech Republic, Hungary,
In January 2019, the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) sought public feedback on some proposed amendments to the Work Injury Compensation Act (WICA). As TWC2 sees over a thousand cases a year of work injury among foreign workers, this matter is germane to our work. MOM's proposals centre chiefly around these themes: 1. Medical leave
The news site TodayOnline reported that the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) "plans to clamp down on employers who abuse salary vouchers — such as by having employees indicate receipt of their wages before they are paid." The news story was dated 26 November 2018 (Link). On the face of it, this sounds like progress. It's
In the fourth of our policy briefs for 2018, Transient Workers Count Too recommends that foreign workers should be free to change employer without needing to get the permission of the existing employer. There should also be a clearer time frame for workers to get new jobs should their existing employers terminate their Work Permits
In the third of our policy briefs for 2018, Transient Workers Count Too recommends that it should be mandatory for work permit holders to first sign a Standard Employment Contract (SEC) even before a work permit application is made. The SEC should set out all the key employment terms, and these should be in accordance
