Story by Deborah Choo / Pictures by Damien Chng
Two weeks after he arrived in Singapore, Mr Delowar Hossen and 35 of his compatriots were sleeping outside the Farrer Park mrt station. They were protesting that they had not been given jobs by their employers. It was only one month later that they found themselves in a dormitory in Tagore Lane.
The Online Citizen (TOC) team paid a visit to Mr. Delowar, a Bangladeshi national, at the dormitory on 3 January.
Entering the dormitory, I was greeted with rows of double-decker beds with wooden planks as beds that looked so squeezed that the walking passage allowed only one person in one direction and no one else. Staleness hung in the air. The whole dormitory had few windows, resulting in poor ventilation. Banana skins and shoes littered the floor, amongst the thick layer of dust that seems unperturbed for the longest time.
Dressed in only a thin white singlet and a blue checked sarong, one Bangladeshi worker, 23, was sitting on his bed looking at his photo while others merely stared in curiosity at us. I saw what kept him so engrossed – his family photo. When I asked him about his family, he pointed to each person one by one and told me about his mother, father, sister and her husband, and finally himself. Upon hearing my praise that his sister is pretty, his eyes shone with pride. He had only been in Singapore for two months, and has not worked a single day. He is not the only foreign worker caught in this dilemma.
Mr. Delowar, 33, came over to Singapore in hopes of finding a good paying job but was severely disappointed. He first arrived in Singapore on the 26 August 2008. However, now more than five months down the road, he still has not worked a single day.
His employer, PA Services Pte Ltd, has yet to provide him with a job. Eight workers, including him, decided to make an appeal to the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), hoping that they would help them find a job, to no avail.
Mr. Delowar was a graduate from a university back in Bangladesh about a decade ago. For the past ten years, he had dedicated his life to the primary education of the younger generation in his country, teaching them mainly English and mathematics. He was earning about 7,000 taka (S$150) a month.
His thought of venturing into Singapore was shared and encouraged by his parents, who parted with their crop plantation to raise S$9,000 for him to pay his agent in order to come to Singapore.
He has a family of five, comprises his parents, his wife and his brother, 23, who is still studying in a tertiary institution. He is the sole breadwinner of the family.
When quizzed about his family, it is one of the rare times where you see a wisp of a smile that vanished all too fast when he thought of the financial burden that followed.
“I have no money to give them,” he said, eyes filled with agony and despair.
He revealed that his family’s expenses amount to between 3,000 to 4,000 taka a month, and added that they now rely on loans borrowed from family and relatives, but this could not go on.
His own welfare now is secondary to him, he says, adding that he only “eats to survive”.
Mr Delowar, like the other 500 workers living in the dormitory, is only provided with a wooden plank of approximately 1.5 cm in thickness to lie on. Only several fortunate ones have an extra mattress to place on top of the wooden plank. He is provided with two meals a day, one at 7 a.m. and another at 7p.m. The meals are the same every day, namely two slices of roti prata with curry in the morning and curry with a few slices of hard bread at night. The curry, however, often has to be thrown away as it has turned bad and the workers could not consume them.
He had hoped to earn a higher pay so as to provide a better life for his family. Above all, he held on to a dream – to build a school back in his hometown so that more Bangladeshi children can have the opportunity to study.
However, he blames no one but the current recession, and remains that “Singapore government is good”. When asked if he would return in the future, he replied that as long as there are opportunities, he would return. He just wishes that the nightmare can be over soon.
Mr. Delowar’s situation is only one out of the 500 voices in that dormitory crying out for help, only to find themselves facing a wall each time they cried out. Basic necessities such as water and food are not adequately provided. Every morning, they would take a 1.5 litre bottle to fill up tap water from the toilet for their drinking needs. This 1.5 litre of water would last them for a day. No washing powder is available to wash their clothes as they could not afford to buy it.
All most of these workers have seen since the two to five months they have set foot in Singapore are the four walls of their dormitory. They do not have any money to even take a bus. Their only recreation is to walk around the neighbourhood to pass time, while some Muslims attend mosque every Friday morning.
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Mr Delowar left for Bangladesh yesterday, 13 Jan, together with 23 others. Andrew Loh’s report will be up soon on TOC.
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It’s pathetic that agents are allowed to exploit workers. What bothers me most is the fact that companies here bring in these workers and then refuse to pay them under some pretext or other. When these companies are exposed through the media, MOM and the police are reluctant to take action.
Even workers with valid Work Permits are dumped after they arrive. Immigration should be held accountable if there is no valid explanation as to how these workers obtained Work Permits. Because someone might be running a racket.
My own chat with some workers revealed that companies, in order to save on wages, sometimes quietly cancel the Work Permits of workers and then report them to the police as illegal overstayers. These workers are then quickly repatriated leaving them no opportunity to explain themselves.
I propose that when a worker’s Work Permit is terminated, he should be asked to report to MOM just to make sure that his employers have paid his salary and all his dues. It’s a simple step but it can prevent employers from exploiting foreign workers. But I suspect no one will bother. Because it is easier to collect your own high civil service salaries and travel with your family for expensive lessons in French cooking.
I believe the reason why this article is not seeing enough comments thus far is because most of us are in a state of shock after reading it.
Just like myself, I do not know what else to say but to hit my head with my hands and questioning myself; “Is this the same Singapore I grew up in? Is this the same Singapore I thought I knew?”.
Very sad – for the worker and Singapore.
I think the ICA and MOM have to answer. How did these workers manage to come in and stay for 5 months without work?
Were they on social visit pass?
Were they granted work permit?
On what basis were the agents able to bring them in?
Did any company submit their man-year entitlement (which, I understand need to be supported with valid employment details) for these workers?
Unfortunately, the ministers are paid millions to “grow the economy”, not to worry about minor issues like these. When elections come, they will ask you “want to upgrade or not”?
MOM and the agents are just like the human smuggling snakeheads from China. Only know how to collect their fees and levies and after that leaving the workers here to die. MOM should have checked on the background of these companies to see if they really had work for these workers before approving their permits.
Only consolation is that these people are still alive to return back to their homeland compared to those chinese who perished in Europe.
I sympathise with these foreign workers who are now in this plight. I knew a few (they are called NTS workers in MOM talk) and often you hear the same thing repeated:
1) Prior to coming here, they pay a huge sum of money to the agent by borrowwing from relatives, high interest loan;
2) They were promised that when they were brought here, they can earn a much higher wage than what they were paid at home. After 2 years of contract, they will be given better pay/working conditions so on….
After arriving here, they were either underpaid/overworked or no work is given like the above. When they complain to MOM, not only they did not get a fair treatment, but sometimes get repartriated unwillingly because the employers complained to MOM that these workers had ran off or broken some company rules.
Has anyone ever seen the manner in which these workers are repartriated? You can see them in the airport; mostly late at night when a bunch of people wearing handcuffs were made to squate in one line waiting for their turn to board the plane.
Did MOM care to find out how to protect the rights of these workers or are the civil servants too busy taking Fench cooking lessons to bother?
Is this how we want to treat our foreign workers? Is this the type of first world “graciousness” that we want to potray to others about our society?
I think the govt has a huge problem in their hands. Where previously, all these issues could be swept under the carpet, for lack of news reports, it is not the same with the easily available news contents found in cyberspace in recent times.
Not only are they reported, but are reported in super quick time, and before one issue could be adequately addressed, the next comes along. From the minibomb saga, to TCs squandering of sinking funds, to the Kangaroo tees, to the nonsense spewed by the ministars, to the plight of foreign workers, to the burning SHT, to name a few, they are going to turn modern day governing topsy-turvy, and I think the PM is struggling to stay afloat.
There is no where more to hide and they are finding it difficult to sweep things under the carpet that is no longer there.
While this is a very pro business place,
we should not encourage employers to
ill-treat workers by eg. not pay and pay them the salaries due’d to them.
its so pro business that even hawkers are employing nearly 80-100% china workers. no need to doubt me, just go around hawker stalls like neighborhood ones.
why would they hire singaporeans?
i not sure leh. you sure you tell me.
by the by
the employers are either PR or citizen.
The government is fond of saying that it is difficult to police and enforce laws with regard to the exploitation of foreign workers. One excuse, lack of manpower. But it seems they have no trouble mobilising truckloads of police officers whenever CSJ does a walkabout. They even bring video cameras.
If the media do not highlight the plight of these workers, no one would know. Except those who go online. Maybe that’s why the media highlights these stories. They can’t hide it.
What about those workers who have been found staying in rubbish dumps? How can the Town Councils not know if it is their job is to keep the estate clean?
I came across this post by one named Robert, who posted his comments in PAP’s Facebook blog, Reach.
Since the PAP has promised to answer all questions posted in this feedback platform, I am left wondering why it is taking them so long to do so since the comments were posted since 18/12/2008.
Here is the post by Robert:
“This has to do with the report in Today on the same subject.
Some months ago I have written to ST Forum, Today and here to highlight the apparent abuse of the men-year quota in the service and construction industries as well as to ask what is it that our “regulatory” bodies like MOM do besides dishing out policies and rules from behind their desks and then enforce punitive actions, viz. fines, when employers found guilty of malpractices.
The Tipper Corporation incident I suspect is just the tip of the iceberg if MOM bothers to do an audit on these quota holders. It is not uncommon for them to collude with employment agents or industry mates to bring in these workers and then lease them out; in order words, labor-trading. I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to guess who are making the bucks from these lease arrangements. The Today report on the case is enough to raise so many questions – bringing in workers mths before a project for “skills training”, agent supposed to “look after” the workers, worked for “3-6 companies” since arrival …
And for mths there have been demonising of these workers by our honorable Singaporeans! MOM shld be pulling the stick out and get the employment situation in order. Such unscrupulous employers and agents shld be dealt the heaviest punishments; after all, one can be sent to jail even for be cruel to an animal.”
There is a second post which was posted 6 hours ago:
“It was reported that MOM is taking a few employers to court for flouting relevant regulations. But is this enough? Are employers the only respobsible parties in these fiascos? Unfortunately no.
Perhaps because no one has made a police report of sorts that authorities like CPIB have not stepped in. The average fee that an employment agent in Singapore gets to bring in foreign worker, be it Chinese or Indian, on a two-year contract job here is anything from $4000 – $6000. I doubt any of the agencies reflect such revenue in their accounts, so where has the money gone?
And who is doing the sourcing for sub-leasing of these workers and “running” to look after them, the HR department of these companies? Unlikely. So, please do a thorough job if the intention is really to clean up the industry and upkeep the reputation of our employment market.”
I wonder what would our government have done if instead of Bangladeshi workers, this had happened to just a few ang mohs???
So many “funny” practices in Singapore huh?
Just this morning, i drove pass a lorry that had a few FW at the back… which is nothing new right?? but this lorry had cages all around the lorry… and lorry was also half full with equipment… even animals are not transported this way i thought…
Remember, the speeches made by MPs and Ministers over the plan to build a dormitory in Serangoon Gardens? They practically called Gardens residents snobbish. They talked of foreign workers being human beings. Yes, they said all the right things. But what exactly are they practicing? The way foreign workers are treated by companies is perhaps half a step removed from outright slavery.
As to the Gardens dormitory, one of the rules state that should a foreign worker be found wandering in Gardens, the dorm operator would be fined. I thought foreign workers are also human beings. And if you fine the dorm operator, he’ll probably ‘fine’ the foreign worker somehow.
Each foreign Worker of Work Permit Pay 8-10K commission to work here with pay around 500-600 and their employer need to pay MOM $300-400 pay month if they unskilled!
Is it worth it ? and why can’t they do simple calculation before decide to borrow money to come here and if employer don’t pay for logging and food, how are they going to live on!
Anybody ask where 10K commission they pay her agents go to where and who has pocket it! How is being distributed!
I once was a Supervisor take care of PRC Workers and my employer don’t even pay them logging compare to indian guys. During their 1st Month here with pay of $500, they can even have dinner after paying their rental and I need to buy them food out of sympathy!
So is the Government going to help Singaporean when out of Job with bill to pay and my answer is a Definate No! When you are left $200-300 in your pocket and begged them, they will open their eye! They love Singaporean to lower their pride and begged them and they feel happy will give you $200 per month or meals coupon! When Gov take $$$$ from you, they call it Law!!! That is Life in Singapore!
If the elite can treat Singaporeans with disdain, what more foreign workers.
To them, we are just resources to be exploited and abandoned when we are no longer useful. If they have a choice they will “repatriate” old and ill Singaporeans to China or Batam.
Pathetic. Foreign agents live off the foreign workers placement fees, local agents live off the foreign workers placement fees, MOM collects foreign workers’ levy, employers exploit cheap labour.
If this happens in Geylang, this is known as living off immoral earnings.
9#
Gemami,
What is so topsy turvy about that? Haha. It’s just the nature of things, isn’t it.
As a government, you are obliged to be able to deal with everything. If you are incapable, out you go.
If you are incapable, out you go; #21) Loyola.
Don’t we wish it is as simple as this?
Our problem is that majority of the people are continually taken in by what this govt says. If it says an apple is blue, they will believe them; or; that pigs can fly, they will also hum the same tune. Thanks to both the MSM and our own inability to think laterally.
The good thing is, the minority pie is getting bigger and bigger by the day. More are waking up from their beauty sleep.
This PAP govt must realise that the honeymoon period with the people is long gone and over. For the larger part of 43 years, we have been swayed and smitten, like a new lover, by their sweet talks and fairytale promises. We have grown and we now know that fairytales belong to a place call Dreamland.
Reality bites, and with each bite, we are becoming more aware of who we are living with. The make-ups have faded, and the face we now see isn’t the same as the one we have pictured.
The face we now see is none other than the old granny in the story; The Little Red Riding Hood.
i am acitizin