Type of issue: skills training and costs
Difficult to get workers with the needed skills, employers say. Look more closely, and we also see a huge reluctance to sponsor workers for training, or even to give them time off to do so.
Seven workers recruited by the extended family of a husband-and-wife couple based in Singapore paid $9,000 each to get jobs jere. Big salaries promised, then stopped altogether.
There's a loophole in the law by which a migrant worker with absolutely no training in basic construction skills can become a construction worker. It's a backdoor via the S-Pass.
A first-time construction worker from Bangladesh walks us through the months in which he prepared for a working life in Singapore. He spent 15 months in preparation. His working life was 6 months. We haven't even mentioned money!
(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.
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.
A worker went through a skills upgrading course and took an exam. He passed. All went well for six years untill a letter from MOM arrived at his employer's office.
Two Bangladeshi workers tell TWC2 that they paid for upskilling courses but didn't get a certificate. One didn't even get any training course. Singapore's dirty underbelly needs authorities' attention, not neglect.
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.
Asad is propably overqualified to be a work permit holder in Singapore. Why is he even here? He explains his rationale, and yup, it's totally logical.
