Discussion: police processes
By Shona Loong Sandir’s story Standing together in Lembu Park Open Space (the ‘Minimart’), 32-year old Sandir points to a spot on the ground and reminisces. In 2008, on the first of three migration trips to Singapore, the Bangladeshi man was caught for littering here. He professes to remember it clearly: after chewing on some
By Alexandra Galvez “I don’t want to go to jail. I cannot come back to Singapore to work if I go to jail. I like Singapore and I want to continue working here. I need to provide for my family,” Ali (not his real name) is worried, his countenance darkening with anxiety and desperation. The
By Fuxiong In the minutes following his three-metre fall, with his right shin and back in pain, Hossian Ramzan was carried by two "tamil man" on the instructions of a company supervisor to a shipping container, "to rest". "Then they lock the door." It worried him, but at first he gave them the benefit of
The Facebook post by Minister for National Development Khaw Boon Wan 11 November 2014 (click thumbnail at right) titled 'Joint exercise with Police, SCDF & foreign worker ambassadors' accompanied by eight photographs does a great disservice to migrant workers who have played such an important role in building Singapore, especially those of South Asian origin
9:30am -- the phone rang. On the line was a TWC2 volunteer telling us about a Filipina domestic worker Mercedes (not her real name) who was crying for help in a shopping mall. We advised the volunteer to send Mercedes to our office as soon as the worker had calmed down. When she arrived at
Once in a while, Transient Workers Count Too succeeds in helping a worker get everything that is due to him. Not only is the worker happy, so are we. Deliriously. But there was a month in which everything looked very bleak for Hazrat (not his real name). His employer had submitted salary vouchers with forged
The drop in the number of immigration offenders was covered recently in the news: 2,077, 1,698, and 1,318 people were arrested for immigration offences in the first half of 2010, 2011 and 2012, respectively [endnote 1]. The news story did not reveal whether these numbers included both male and female immigration offenders, who encounter significantly
A simple salary claim became a 14-month saga, eating up a good chunk of state resources. It was completely unnecessary, since the solutions that would prevent such disputes from arising in the first place are almost no-brainers. Yet, for reasons unknown, the Ministry of Manpower has not adopted the suggested solutions proposed by Transient Workers
