Recruitment
reform

PROMOTING SYSTEMIC CHANGE

RECRUITMENT REFORM

“In total, I gave to come here… S$12,000. For me to come here, to arrange the money required, my parents sold our land.” – Migrant worker (name redacted) 

Migrant workers’ journeys often begin long before they arrive in Singapore. For many, that journey starts in debt. Messy cross-border recruitment networks expose workers to high fees, deception, and coercive practices that shape their vulnerability from day one.

TWC2 thus advocates for a reformed recruitment system that is more tightly regulated by the Singapore government. We document workers’ experiences, expose deceptive practices, and work with policymakers and industry stakeholders to push for systemic changes that reduce debt, improve accountability, and ensure workers can migrate safely and with dignity.

TWC2 volunteers listening to a Tamil worker describe his recruitment experiences.

Background on migration dynamics

Singapore’s reliance on migrant labour is foundational to its economic model. In the 1970s, as the country industrialised and grew quickly, Singapore opened its doors to foreign workers to fill labour shortages. What started as a temporary solution soon became a permanent feature of the economy. By the 1980s, Singapore was actively importing low-wage labour for construction, manufacturing, and domestic work, embedding a system where foreign workers filled jobs that were deliberately kept low-cost and unattractive to locals.

Today, this heavy dependence on migrant labour is sustained by a recruitment system that places the burden on workers themselves.

High recruitment fees: Migrant workers often pay thousands of dollars for their jobs here, forking out amounts as high as S$16-18k. These fees are often collected by informal agents in their home countries and in Singapore. 

Debt bondage: To afford their recruitment fees, many workers sell their land and family jewellery, and take on high-interest loans. With extremely low salaries of the jobs here, many have to work a long time to break even, and remain trapped in debt for a long time.

Forced labour: Because workers arrive heavily in debt, losing their job would be catastrophic. They thus feel compelled to endure unsafe conditions or illegal practices to repay what they owe.

Contract substitution: Even when promised jobs, salaries, or conditions are changed upon their arrival, workers are unable to resign because of the huge fees they have invested.

These are not just rare or isolated cases, but systemic features of a recruitment model that relies on intermediaries, and cross-border fragmentation. Through conversations with migrant workers, TWC2 builds evidence around the contours of recruitment networks, highlights the costs of the system, and pushes for a centralised, mandatory recruitment system in Singapore.

Submissions to international bodies:

Key TWC2 reports on recruitment:

  • 2025: report on Myanmar workers’ recruitment landscape
  • 2024: report on Tamil workers’ recruitment fees
  • 2022: report on post-pandemic recruitment landscape
  • 2020: overview on recruitment reform
  • 2020: report on policy recommendations 
  • 2019: study on shipyard workers’ recruitment fees
  • 2016: research series on recruitment fees

Our work on recruitment issues

The Singapore government has tended to treat recruitment as something that happens outside its borders. This view, repeated in parliamentary responses, means that it is often seen as a problem “over there”, rather than something that warrants any action on our part.

TWC2’s research and advocacy directly challenge this narrative, and firmly situates recruitment as a local issue. Through our conversations with workers, we collect detailed accounts of how recruitment fees are paid and who is involved. We have identified two recurring patterns that suggest:

  1. Local transactions: Workers paying fees into Singapore bank accounts, often to individuals linked to employers or agencies
  2. Licensed employment agencies: Agencies that misrepresent job terms or collaborate with overseas brokers to extract higher fees

By systematically documenting these practices, we build an evidence base that informs policy recommendations and strengthens calls for enforcement action.

Exposing kickbacks and local transactions:

Beyond persecuting bad actors in the recruitment system, TWC2 advocates for a system that cuts out all middlemen completely. 

We call for MOM to introduce a centralised jobs portal where all Work Permit jobs must be listed. It should be compulsory for all recruitment to be done through the portal and no other channel. It should also be comprehensive, such that all communications and payments must be logged via the portal for forensic purposes. 

As we have documented over the years, the absence of a centralised, regulated system also weakens the integrity of Singapore’s work pass system. Messy recruitment networks make it easier for pass abuse to occur, including misuse of S Pass and Employment Pass arrangements, and deception through schemes like Training Employment Pass (TEP) pathways.

We stand ready to assist any pilots in the public and private sectors, but the success of such a portal relies on it being state-driven and mandatory. In the meantime, we consistently highlight how a lack of transparent job-matching mechanisms fuels exploitation, and destabilises Singapore’s work pass system.

Documenting vulnerabilities in our work pass system:

Several countries which are major trade partners of Singapore, such as the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, have legislation requiring big companies to be responsible for human rights abuses in the operations abroad. Responsibility encompasses actions of subcontractors and other parties in their supply chain. The EU Parliament has passed the Due Diligence Directive too, requiring EU companies (and non-EU companies operating in the EU) to be similarly responsible.

Large multinationals are now required to identify and address human rights risks across their entire value chains, including subcontractors and overseas suppliers. In response, parts of the industry are already moving ahead with supply chain reforms, seeking ways to adopt due diligence practices and ethical sourcing standards even if governments outside of the EU do not require it.

TWC2 participates in industry conversations on ethical recruitment, providing ground-up evidence and consulting with companies who seek to improve their re/mediation and recruitment practices.

To add substance to such conversations, we document how recruitment operates in practice:

Singapore’s Marine sector workers are key to building offshore structures like the above, but the sector is rife with forced labour.