This case was first covered in the story Four workers allege employer made them pay for their jobs, MOM investigating. That was based on an interview in December 2015 soon after a group of men had lodged complaints at the Ministry of Manpower. In this subsequent interview, conducted on 8 March 2016, one of the
By Ranjana Raghunathan At TWC2's Cuff Road Project, a group of five workers, three Indian and two Bangladeshi, catch my attention. They seem to know each other, and have come to enroll themselves in the free meal program together. Upon questioning a little, I learn that they, along with four other workers, faced issues
By Jiang Haolie It is unthinkable to survive in Singapore earning just $227 a month, or $1.19 for every hour of backbreaking work. Bidut (not his real name), a reclamation worker is doing just that. For comparison, an indoor job at McDonalds would pay five to six dollars an hour; it would earn you Bidut's daily
By Jas Talukder Joynal approaches me hesitantly, yet he does not strike me as a man of low self-esteem. Clad in a brightly coloured checkered shirt, with a good trendy fit, he definitely cares about his appearance. His face is one that has not yet been marked with the hardships of life and I am a little
By Seema Punwani You must spend money to make money. Even Forbes magazine propagates this theory and it has probably inspired several entrepreneurs. A worker living across the Indian Ocean in Bangladesh who has limited formal education and sparse knowledge of English has in all probability not come across this famous quote. However for him this is
Early indications were encouraging. Maybe it's a sign that the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) is at last taking kickback complaints seriously. But at the time of the interview, it's too early to say how this case will turn out. What is clear though is that Anwar Hossain Abdur Rab is happy. And very fortunate compared
In the wake of the sentencing of a construction company boss for demanding kickbacks from his employees (see news story in Today newspaper, thumbnail at right), the Straits Times had a story about his unsavoury practice on 13 April 2015. The Straits Times noted that extortionate demands are typically made when the worker is most
By Ashley Frois We're barely under the eaves. Rain, like troubles, pours down mere inches from our seats. Everything is damp. Two seats away and drier, a fellow volunteer is interviewing another construction worker, Rahman Sadequr. That worker is speaking morosely of his money problems. My interviewee, Musfiqur (pictured above), is strangely upbeat. He too
In a lecture delivered at the Institute of Policy Studies, National University of Singapore, on 12 November 2014, Ho Kwon Ping, executive chairman of Banyan Tree Holdings and IPS-Nathan Fellow for the Study of Singapore, made a few proposals with respect to migrant workers in Singapore. The relevant part is here: First, we can perhaps
By Jennifer Parenteau Mohamed Ariful sits down beside me and begins to tell me his story. At first it seems like a simple case of improper calculation of his medical leave wages, but as we talk it reveals much more than that! In June 2014, Ariful was working for the construction company, Calpen Contracters. He
