Discussion: economics of labour migration
By John Gee In 2011, when looking into the costs Bangladeshis face in coming to work in Singapore’s construction industry, one of the expenses about which the research team asked workers was that of training. They quickly discovered that, though the workers had to pay significant amounts to training centres to gain skills that would qualify them to
The report Training centres in Bangladesh have become money-minting machines (published September 2013) was based on research done in Dhaka. Drawing from anecdotal information, we asserted in the paper that "Most workers report that their Singapore jobs are unrelated to the skills they trained for." This anecdotal information was from workers whom Transient Workers Count Too
A key plank in Transient Workers Count Too's advocacy is that of untying a work permit holder from his employer, and allowing him (or her) job mobility. Naturally, even as he seeks alternative employment, only employers who have the requisite work permit quota will be able to employ him. We recognise that the quota (known
Most times, when TWC2 volunteers interview workers, the conversation tends to focus on the immediate problem he or she faces, be it an injury needing proper medical attention, unpaid salaries, or a job scam. Suman Barman has an injury too, to his right thumb, but he was also a good case study of someone who
Former president of Transient Workers Count Too, John Gee, spoke at the NUS Human Trafficking Conference on 10 January 2014. Others on the panel included Kandhavel Periyasamy (Joint Ops Director, Ministry of Manpower), Jolovan Wham (Workfair Singapore) and two students from Singapore Management University who recently did a project relating to trafficking. John's paper was titled: Migrants
Below is the short talk TWC2 vice-president Alex Au (above, 2nd from left) gave at the Human Rights Day seminar organised by the Delegation of the European Union delegation to Singapore, 10 December 2013. The theme of the seminar was 'Contemporary perspectives on economic & social rights'. --- In the matter of employment, we would
By Shahnaz What does Mattaparthi Kumaraswamy have to show for the six years he has worked? Very little. When he goes back to India, he will have no savings, hardly any prospect of a job, yet there's an extended family to feed. Has he seen the sights of Singapore, gone shopping in Orchard, taken a holiday? The
It started as a way to ensure that migrant workers coming to Singapore had some basic skills, but the raison d'etre has since become something else: to extract as much money as possible from the poor. "It" is the tangled business of providing training, testing and recruitment in Bangladesh. The key to its metamorphosis is
By Ghie Ghie Mosquera Harking back to those years when I was still in the Philippines and living with my family, those were the happiest days of my life. Living a simple life with special people around me is all I ever dreamed of. But, there were days where I realised that something was lacking:
By YC Loh For Bangladeshis in their first job here, about half paid more than S$7,000 to their agent. More than 70 percent paid over $5,000. By contrast, the majority (over 60%) of Indians paid less than $5,000 to their agent for their first job. These figures emerged from a survey recently conducted by TWC2. The average
