Employment agents, agent fees
In quick succession, many cases that looked like a new type of job scam surfaced. Agents and employers appear to be exploiting weaknesses in scrutiny and vetting in MOM's IPA process. Victims come to TWC2 one after another.
Government policy is that migrant workers with valid claims against their employers will be allowed to look for new jobs with first being repatriated, but how do they find new jobs?
A critical document is issued by MOM in PDF format, but nowadays, scammers have the skills to create forgeries. Prospective workers lose thousands of dollars.
Despite having worked 15 months, a foreign worker has not met his boss; it's his agent who gives him work and pays his salary. The arrangement smells fishy.
Agents earn huge sums off the backs of migrant workers from Bangladesh coming to work in Singapore. Do these agents contribute to our economy?
A message came into TWC2's help centre, telling us about a fake IPAs and how two workers in India paid money and were victims of a scam. Why are IPAs so easy to forge?
Despite great efforts at TWC2, workers don't often get full satisfaction over their grievances. And then when we least expect it, things turn out right.
We have a law that says the In-Principle Approval in its entirety must reach the foreign worker 3 days before he leaves for Singapore. Now we have a case study where it didn't. How did MOM respond?
A worker went to MOM and TADM saying he was being asked to work 14 hours a day, which he refused, and that he was then fired. He was told that he had no case. And the logic is?
A worker shows us a document wherein his employer had declared that the worker did not pay any recruitment fees or costs. Then the worker tells us what he had to pay.
