Type of issue: job placement, recruitment and costs
(Mis)information given to migrant workers before they decide to take up a job, inability to ask the right questions, reliance on agents can lay the ground for serious difficulties after they start work.
A recruiter goes onto Facebook to publicise his scheme to hire low-wage workers in violation of Singapore law; he seems to have nothing to fear.
Construction worker Domog faces a host of problems, of which his agent fee is not top of mind, but nonetheless we ask him to detail the payments he has had to make.
A curious case involving nearly 20 men approaching TWC2 within a week, all of whom had proper IPAs at MOM, but due to a mismatch of names compared with their passports, were refused Work Permits. Now left jobless.
Employers abused the Training Employment Pass scheme to hire cheap day labour; now hear it from the worker's perspective: distress, helplessness and financial disaster.
Our earlier article "Management executives" washing dishes got media attention. Then more informants came to us to tell us about the issue. It's much bigger than we had thought.
Another day, another scam. This time, it involves the Training Employment Pass. This case suggests lax controls and oversight at MOM. But when real individuals lose big money, something has to be done.
A Chinese worker was asked to work, not for the company stated on her work permit, but for a related company. The boss was the same. How could she say no? And then when she was not paid properly, how does she claim what's due?
Sixty years after Singapore ratified the ILO's Forced Labour Convention 29, we can't help but see areas where Singapore can be accused of insufficient compliance. What are those areas?
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.
