By Eitan He's been hobbling around with that boot and a crutch for four months already. Every day he goes up and down three floors to get his free meals provided by Transient Workers Count Too, each step presenting a risk of tumbling down. Unable to put weight on his broken right foot, he largely
By Elizabeth Zhou Cleanly shaven, he is dressed in a tight-fitting dark blue T-shirt that betrays a physique built by hard labour. A pair of trendy earphones is slung around his neck. It is my first time at Transient Workers Count Too's free meals point, known as The Cuff Road Project. I am unsure how
Most men from Bangladesh dress quite conservatively. Compared to his compatriots, Sohel, standing at our front door, flashed a lot of skin. Your writer remarked to himself: This guy is halfway to becoming Singaporean. When Sohel opened his mouth, more proof flowed. He was fluent in Singlish. It turned out that for the better part of
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
By Joyce Wong Monjor's boss wanted him to accept a lower pay than previously agreed. He refused. Then repatriation agents came. Last month, testifying before the Committee of Inquiry looking into the Little India riots, Kevin Teoh of MOM's Foreign Manpower Management Division, said, as reported in Today newspaper: Asked about the framework in place
At the Migrant Awareness Week organised by students in the law school of National University of Singapore, 3 - 7 March 2014, a whole host of activities were on the calendar. For the forum of 3 March, TWC2 vice-president Alex Au (pictured above with HOME's Celine Dermine on his left) gave a presentation. Below is
The director of the Foreign Manpower Management Division, Kevin Teoh, told the commission of inquiry looking into the Little India riots that his ministry does not abandon workers. This was after TWC2 president Russell Heng had hold the committee in earlier testimony that workers "basically have to resort to charity to survive in Singapore" as they
Our recent article about workers from Woolim Plant Engineering & Construction Company explained how the Bangladeshi employees were underpaid for over a year before deciding to raise the issue, and how Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2) assisted them in calculating their salaries and lodging a complaint with the Ministry of Manpower (MOM). This is far
Continued from Woolim, part 1: How low can a salary get? Early January 2014, Iqbal comes to the office with a group of his co-workers telling us that three of the fifteen men have accepted a settlement offer from the employer Woolim, wherein each of them would receive $2,000. This, says Iqbal, is a far
Continued from Dulal faced problems on all fronts, none of his own making Laymen think that polygraph tests can reliably establish the veracity of a person’s statement and detect his lies. Perhaps those old movies of the polygraph pen gyrating wildly on the chart and the suspect shouting out his confession, convinced that it’s futile to
