By Lindene Cleary Shabul came to Singapore in 2009 to work for a marine company. During those five years he has dedicated himself to working hard to support himself and his family back home in Bangladesh. He’s never been injured, and has taken only a handful of days off for illness. Earlier this month, he
By Samantha Ege His name is Shohag, a young graduate from Bangladesh with a Bachelor of Business Studies. He sits opposite me and spreads three cards on the table between us. ‘Building Construction Supervisor’, ‘Work-at-Height’, ‘Lifting Supervisor’ they read, giving me a glimpse of the post-degree path Shohag has taken here, in Singapore. But the
By Maya Nguyen Sixteen days after an accident, Sahajahan, 28, went to a lawyer to seek help with his case. He was then sent to the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) where he was told his Work Permit had been cancelled eleven days before. No one had told him. Sahajahan was completely unaware that his overstay
Express Point Engineering Pte Ltd took exception to our article published on 17 December 2014, titled 'Injured Hossian hidden away in locked container'. The employer asserted that this was untrue, though this was possibly later qualified with a further nuance: that they had no knowledge of any such incident. Following an email from Express Point,
By Fuxiong In the minutes following his three-metre fall, with his right shin and back in pain, Hossian Ramzan was carried by two "tamil man" on the instructions of a company supervisor to a shipping container, "to rest". "Then they lock the door." It worried him, but at first he gave them the benefit of
It is still October 2014. Chodawre Badal doesn't say much, but just shows your writer a letter from the National University Hospital (NUH) giving him an assessment date for 8 May 2015, seven months away. 'Assessment' is the stage when a worker, following a work injury, is assessed for residual permanent incapacity, so that an
TWC2 volunteer Meera Rajah assisted a worker as he struggled to sort out his injury case after having things messed up by a law firm. This is Meera's detailed account of how the mess came about and what she had to do to help him. It shines a spotlight into an area not often discussed:
This is the talk TWC2 vice-president Alex Au gave at the National University of Singapore to a large class (about 300 - 400) of students from various faculties on 15 October 2014. The text here is a somewhat fuller version of the talk itself, which wasn't entirely read from script, and which was constrained by
In theory, employers are required by law to provide medical treatment for work permit holders they bring into Singapore. In practice, the more unscrupulous employers will try to get the employee out of Singapore before the worker realises he is being deprived of treatment and learns to use official channels to get his employer to
By Isabel Chew Aktaruzzaman is intent on telling me his story. His cellphone rings a number of times during our interview but he rejects them because it is more important that people hear his story. On 23 July, Aktar and a co-worker were moving a 6-inch pipe weighing (by his estimate) 60 kg when his
