For a long, long time, TWC2 has been calling for electronic payment of salaries to be made mandatory. Giving employers the option to pay in cash allows all sorts of abuses to happen and seriously disadvantages workers when salary is not paid or only partially paid. Workers are left with no evidence as to how
By Debbie Fordyce Does the Ministry of Manpower pay lawyers to handle work injury compensation claims? “Lawyers always exciting to take case.” At least some injured workers certainly think that MOM does. They say that they’ve heard that MOM pays lawyers $300 a month to file and manage work injury compensation (WIC) claims. Newly injured
The news site TodayOnline reported that the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) "plans to clamp down on employers who abuse salary vouchers — such as by having employees indicate receipt of their wages before they are paid." The news story was dated 26 November 2018 (Link). On the face of it, this sounds like progress. It's
Unlike other studies that tend to be more focussed on a particular issue, e.g. recruitment costs or access to healthcare, this study takes a more inclusive approach, to look at the various costs of migration, as surfaced by migrant workers themselves in face-to-face interviews. It therefore reveals issues that may be missed by other studies,
In this article "$" represents the Singapore Dollar unless we specifically say otherwise, e.g."US$". It's been some time since we last wrote about recruitment costs. It's not a topic we should lose sight of. No progress is being made on this front, and high costs remain the chief reason why migrant workers cannot exert their
Seven volunteers from TWC2 manned our stall at a migrant worker roadshow on Sunday, 18 December 2018. The humidity was high and everyone was sweaty, more so when workers crowded around our stand, but it was well worth it. We must have given out hundreds of fliers -- maybe a thousand -- all in their
By Ada Cheong, based on an interview in September 2018 Miah Younose takes his arm off the table and leans back into his chair, laughing to make light of his predicament. Unpaid for four months and bearing the sunken cost of $4,800 in agent fees, he is desperate to remain in Singapore to find
Following a story in the Straits Times (see earlier article) about a circular jointly issued by the Ministries of Health (MOH) and Manpower (MOM) reminding doctors about their ethical responsibility to issue appropriate medical leave, a hand surgeon affiliated with Gleneagles Hospital wrote to the newspaper's forum with his point of view. Dr Andrew Yam
On 17 September 2018, the Ministries of Health and Manpower jointly issued a circular to doctors reminding them to abide by guidelines laid out by the Singapore Medical Council (SMC) with reference to medical leave. The relevant guidelines cited were the 2016 Ethical Code and Ethical Guidelines (ECEG): Guideline B4(4) - Medical Certificates. The full circular
For several months in late 2017 and early 2018, we puzzled over a statement by the then-Minister for Manpower Lim Swee Say that in the first half of 2017, only about 600 of foreign workers with salary claims indicated that they wished to find new employment (see footnote 1). We felt that 600 was an
