The back story of Jahirul's journey to Singapore is even worse than the Part 1 story of being assaulted by his boss. Uncomfortable questions arise about the Singapore "system".
We encountered yet another worker with a shockingly low salary and very high recruitment costs. He is a shipyard worker - the very industry under pressure from its international customers to clean up its act.
This research report examines the recruitment experiences of male migrant workers from Tamil Nadu, focussing on how much they paid to get their jobs, to whom and where. How do these costs compare with salary?
Lately, TWC2 has been receiving more and more complaints from workers that they were issued IPAs for jobs they had not agreed to. We help them get the IPAs cancelled.
Dul comes to TWC2 with a multi-layered problem. He tells us how he was recruited and what happened soon after he started working for the employer. But is there a solution?
Shipyard worker Liton comes to TWC2 for the first time. It takes only minutes before we hear the usual issues, including that he had to pay for his job.
The Bangladesh authorities are giving top-ups of five percent to every remittance sent home. It seems very generous. But there is one unintended consequence. Did anyone foresee it?
Ponmugan spoke no English. His only experience of work was as a casual day labourer. What happens when he's thrown into our bureaucratic workstyle.
We were glad that MOM re-affirmed ministers' statements that workers with valid salary claims will get permission to transfer to new jobs, but how does it work in practice?
A start-up developing a low-cost recruitment platform showed TWC2 their model and asked for our views. We were encouraged by what we saw.
