On the morning of 29 September 2012 as he was about to start work, Dulal Abdul Hai found a crowd gathering to watch a fight between an Indian lorry driver and a Bangladeshi welder. Without pausing to consider the reason for the fight, he made the risky decision to intervene and pull the two men
Ananth's newly-minted Special Pass, that's bad news for him By Fuxiong Around 20 November 2013, "MOM call all 30 men to [a] meeting," says Ananth (not his real name). I ask if the boss was present. "No, not boss, but company driver [was] there." Held at the Bendemeer offices of the Ministry of
The panel comprised (L-R) Braema Mathi (Maruah), Russell Heng (TWC2), Siew Kum Hong (Maruah/moderator), Jolovan Wham (Workfair) and Vincent Law (Healthserve) TWC2 president Russell Heng spoke for the organisation at a public forum 'Foreign workers, justice and fairness', organised by human rights group Maruah on 23 December 2013. To the 100-strong audience, in
Hossain Iqbel's IPA states a basic monthly salary of $800, but for a year, he's been paid a basic of only $1.50 an hour (equivalent to $286 a month). The 'IPA' is the In-principle Approval for a Work Permit, a letter issued by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) to employer and employee prior to the
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
GO TO PART 23 November 2013, Saturday At last, the story appears in the Straits Times, but it's quite deeply buried within the local news section. The Online Citizen has a longer story. For a summary of both stories, see Menton Technologies' failure to pay salaries in the news. Alex visits one of the Geylang
18 Nov 2013, Monday evening A small group of five men approach TWC2 executive committee members Debbie Fordyce and Alex Au at our free meals location in Little India, telling us that they've not been paid and have lost their jobs. Two more workers arrive and Alex sits down with all seven of them to
Mozumder nearly died. He was inches away from falling six floors. Then the Ministry of Manpower wanted to send him to jail, accused of lying about the accident. Today he is a free man, very thankful to Transient Workers Count Too and to pro-bono lawyers Nicole Wee and Joanna Goh of TSMP Law Corporation. The
By Davina Tham When injured workers come to Transient Workers Count Too, the sorry tales they bring are usually about trying to get proper medical treatment and difficulty in getting reluctant employers to foot the bills as they should by law. Rarely is there someone like Lakshmanan Sasikumar, whose employer seems to have checked all
By Benjamin Wong Arumugam Ramachandran first came to Singapore four years ago. For three years Ramachandran worked injury free, but seven months ago, during a routine construction job, Ramachandran injured his knee. At first, he was unwilling to report it, and tried to carry on working, hoping the pain would go away eventually. For the
