Salim arrived in Singapore with an IPA letter saying the job would pay him $950 per month. Within 36 hours, his boss told him the salary would be around $520 a month. Take it or leave it.
Foreign workers are increasingly becoming illegal job agents, preying on fellow countrymen like Alamin wanting to come to Singapore. This underground activity puts Singapore's law and order reputation at risk.
Two Bangladeshi workers tell us about waiting. Waiting to get overtime wages, waiting to get claims settled through MOM. But waiting is not painless.
TWC2 volunteer Stefan dives deep into issues of loans, pawning, interest rates and repayment installments. Compared to the meagre salaries foreign workers in low-skill jobs earn, the numbers are disturbing.
In this research study, TWC2 found that about 80% of South Asian workers were "repeat workers", a huge change from a few years ago. We also found that about half of them used a Singapore-based job broker to find a job. Typically, these are foreign workers themselves, not licensed employment agents. It's illicit but profitable.
By L. Narasimhan based on an interview in March 2019 "I wander around the city, going from place to place trying to find a new job," says Sukhwinder Singh, when I ask him what he has been doing for the past three months. "I wake up in my apartment, eat at Gurudwara [temple], and then go
Senthilkumar's salary claim didn't end well for him. It went all the way to the Employment Claims Tribunal which found against him on 1 March 2019. In a nutshell, his claim was that the payment vouchers he was asked to sign (and add his thumbprint to) had amounts that didn't match the cash
By Avijit B, based on an interview in March 2019 Gafur has had a turbulent time since the day he arrived in Singapore. In the space of seven months, he went from the hope of steady work abroad to the frustration of being stuck without work and pay. Borrowing money from relatives to pay for
Most foreign workers in the construction industry are in their twenties. Volunteer Jeremy Xiao met a older man in January 2019, who spoke to him about the weight of his family responsibility and the struggle to land a job. Yet, some experiences are all the same whether for younger workers or older ones --
By Debbie Fordyce The first graph (below) suggests that a disproportionate number of Indian and Bangladeshi migrant workers lodge injury claims within the first six months of starting a job. Moreover, TWC2's observation is that many of these injuries are minor and result in little compensation or will heal completely, thus meriting no disability compensation
