By Jacintha Gopal Narayanasamy Arulmurugan (Arul) has in hand a formal order issued by a Labour Court ordering his employer to pay him $18,276.42 in owed salary. But he is facing the stark possibility that he’d soon be told by the Ministry of Manpower to buy his own ticket and go home to India without
By Fuxiong Torikul's hoped-for second job in Singapore never materialised. Instead, he's $4,500 in the red, having paid this total sum to an 'agent' and the boss. Getting it back is going to be difficult. He borrowed this amount from his father-in-law, who mortgaged his small plot of farmland to raise the money for him.
By Joyce Wong Where is next month’s money going to come from? Sitting in front of me is a very young, clean-shaven man. He is neatly dressed with his hair slightly touching his collar. Some would call him good-looking. He is here for his dinner at TWC2's soup kitchen when we ask to interview him.
It started as a way to ensure that migrant workers coming to Singapore had some basic skills, but the raison d'etre has since become something else: to extract as much money as possible from the poor. "It" is the tangled business of providing training, testing and recruitment in Bangladesh. The key to its metamorphosis is
By Keith W "Now I get less," says Prashath Ranthulan (not his real name). "Other worker, they take $3,000 and go back [home]. Agent give, but tell worker [if] take money, cannot go MOM." He was the only one to turn down the hush money. Why? "I want to complain MOM. I don't want other
