Minister of state for community development, youth and sports, Halimah Yacob, called on employers not to insist that domestic workers clean the outside of windows. She was responding to reporters' questions about the seven maids who had fallen to their deaths so far this year while cleaning windows or hanging out the laundry. Her words

The new Settling-in-Programme (SIP) for first-time domestic workers will kick in from May 1, reported the Straits Times on April 14, 2012. The compulsory programme replaces a controversial entry test which many first-time maids find hard to pass because of their weak command of the English language. The workers must attend the course before their work

Speaking to reporters, the secretary-general of the Natioanl Trades Union Congress (NTUC), Lim Swee Say, said "'Today, our challenge is that we are too foreign worker-centric." This was reported in the Straits Times on April 14, 2012. Lim, who is also a minister without portfolio, added, "I, as secretary-general, feel that we need to get

The term 'placement fees' will, after May 1, 2012, only include the cost of medical check-ups, document processing and charges by Indonesian training centres, unlike currently where the term includes fees by recruitment agencies and other middlemen. This change will mean lowering placement fees from about $3,000 currently to about $1,600 for first-time maids and

In a statement issued March 26, 2012, the Ministry of Manpower announced that work permit holders from "non-traditional sources" such as Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand, as well as from China, can be employed for a maximum of ten years, up from six years previously.  The statement can be seen at http://www.mom.gov.sg/newsroom/Pages/PressReleasesDetail.aspx?listid=415 The ministry

Shokkanarayanan Ramakrishnan, 43, was sentenced to four weeks'  jail for abetting a false declaration as part of an S-Pass scam. The Permanent Resident was then an employment agent with Islets Solutions Pte Ltd, and had helped an employer (not named in the Channel NewsAsia story, March 26, 2012) "to falsely over-declare the monthly salaries of