Foreign workers in Singapore 'bear the brunt'
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After shattering his left heel bone when he fell off a ladder, Chinese national Ah Ping's already difficult life as a labourer in Singapore took a sharp turn for the worse.
His Singaporean contractor boss refused to file an injury compensation claim with the manpower ministry, fearing it would sully the company's record. When Ah Ping applied for it himself after nine days in hospital, things turned ugly.
"He came up to me while I was resting and asked me why I filed the claim," said the 23-year-old from Shandong province, in eastern China, his youthful face creased in a frown.
"He got angry and slapped me in the face, then he raised his fists and punched me," said Ah Ping, who cannot give his full name because he is assisting police with investigations.
Fleeing the dank, mosquito-ridden warehouse he says his boss forced him to stay in, Ah Ping went to aid group Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (HOME) seeking refuge in their shelter for exploited foreign workers.
Social workers in Singapore are reporting a rise in the number of foreign workers such as Ah Ping who approach them for help with cases ranging from wage disputes to assault.
Maligned by some Singaporeans for supposedly stealing jobs and causing overcrowding, foreigners holding work permits numbered more than 870,000 at the end of 2010 out of Singapore's total population of 5.1 million.
They often do the dirty, difficult and dangerous jobs that Singaporeans shun, toiling as maids, construction hands, street sweepers, garbage collectors, cooks and dishwashers as well as lower-end factory workers.
Most come from China, South Asia and Southeast Asia.
"We see an average of about 120 to 150 workers a month... four years ago it was less, maybe about 100," said Jolovan Wham, executive director of HOME.
"The cases that we see are mostly about labour exploitation," he told AFP in his office as more than 10 workers waited their turn to consult him and his colleagues about their woes.
Even though the manpower ministry reported a fall in foreign worker complaints from a three-year high of 3,774 in 2009 to 3,200 last year, Wham said the figure was "not reliable" as it focused on only salary-related issues.
Wham said the liberalisation of Singapore's immigration policies in recent years to bring in more workers to power the labour-starved economy contributed to the growing number of abuse cases.
"The government sees foreign workers as economic digits, here to help grow the economy, so they look at them as commodities," he said.
The government has slowed down the intake of foreigners since the 2009 recession but says the economy cannot function without a steady stream of blue-collar workers.
The presence of so many foreign workers in a densely populated city-state has become a hot issue in Singapore and the debate reached a crescendo in the campaign for last month's general elections, raising fears of more abuse.
Migrant worker rights advocacy group Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2) reported an increase in the number of foreign workers seeking help to 2,178 last year, from 2,087 in 2009, and fears the number may rise again.
TWC2 executive director Vincent Wijeysingha, who lost as an opposition candidate in the May election, said the manner in which immigration was discussed during the campaign could hurt foreign workers even more.
"Unfortunately what the elections did, and we politicians must shoulder our share of responsibility for it, is that a xenophobic approach to foreigners could become widespread," Wijeysingha told AFP.
"In other countries, when a politician says something that could be viewed as xenophobic, a spike in hate crime sometimes results. It may not be entirely different in Singapore."
Before the elections, xenophobic sentiment had surfaced in scattered incidents, including one in 2008 when residents of an affluent suburb protested against the building of a foreign worker dormitory in their estate.
The residents petitioned the government to drop the plan, saying the dormitory -- separated from the estate by a road -- would "create security and social problems and spoil the ambiance of the estate".
Authorities still approved the project but advised the dormitory operator to consider chartering buses to ferry workers to popular destinations in order to prevent them from congregating within the estate.
Ah Ping, the Chinese worker who accused his boss of beating him up over an injury compensation claim, now worries about how he is going to repay a 470,000 yuan ($72,400) bank loan he took out to pay a middleman to get a job in Singapore.
An only child, he also needs to support his parents, whom he has not seen since he came to Singapore two-and-a-half years ago.
"Sometimes I listen to the old songs my mum used to sing on the radio and...," Ah Ping mused, his voice trailing off as he looked away into the distance.
-- Yahoo!
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borrowed 470,000 yuan ? I am wondering, why doesnt he use this money to start a business in china or use this money to invest instead of coming here to work as a labourer?
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certain things doesn't gel here .....
i know there are a few arsehole contractors around, those who went pok and then skipped town without paying salary for months, those tiongs and nehs who kenna such bosses have my sympathies .....
but, remember those angry demonstrations by ah tiongs in front of the MOM ? remember the group of ah tiongs who laid seige to the main contractor's office after their subcontractor skipped town ? ....
ah tiongs nowadays, are not someone you can casually trample over .... something doesn't smell right when this chap says he was slapped and punched by his contractor .... if you know chinese peasants the boss would have been hammered black and blue all over by the chap or his countrymen colleagues ....
and nearly half a million yuan to come here ? .... all of my clients hire ah tiongs for their operations and this figure certainly sounds like bullshit ....
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For such a huge amount of money, I would think it would have been better for them to just take the money and disappeared to another rural chinese town thousands of miles away to live happily ever after.
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May I ask, what collateral does he give first? even a loan shark wont lend him so much without something in return isnt it. his interest payment is enough to kill him for a few months.
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Originally posted by charlize:
For such a huge amount of money, I would think it would have been better for them to just take the money and disappeared to another rural chinese town thousands of miles away to live happily ever after.
Ya lor. They really think Singaporeans eat GOLD for every meal.
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I got quite a number of ah tiongs in my company, males and females. when something crops up, I noticed they tend to get agitated and angry very easily and starting to raise their voices. I dun like uncouth people.
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Originally posted by Rooney9:
May I ask, what collateral does he give first? even a loan shark wont lend him so much without something in return isnt it. his interest payment is enough to kill him for a few months.
I can only think of farm land.
Maybe a few oxen thrown in too.
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$72,400!!!
They think Singapore has a yellow brick road that leads to the lost city of gold.
They used to be called snake oil salesmen, but these days they are called employment middlemen.
So goes the old adage, there's a sucker born every minute.
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According to the report, it's a bank loan.
So easy to get huge bank loans like this from a chinese bank?
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Actually why do they assume it is always Singaporean Bosses? I have met China FW who worked for Indonesian Boss in Singapore . His boss is outright stingy towards them.
Those FT/FW may be working for PR bosses, Malaysians Bosses, Indonesian Bosses and not all are local bosses.
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I think someone should write " Local Singaporean bosses bear the brunt " when FT/FW are mis-treated by other nationalites bosses operating in Singapore. I am not surprised if the PR CHINA bosses ill treat their china workers first.
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Originally posted by Wiser:
Actually why do they assume it is always Singaporean Bosses? I have met China FW who worked for Indonesian Boss in Singapore . His boss is outright stingy towards them.
Those FT/FW may be working for PR bosses, Malaysians Bosses, Indonesian Bosses and not all are local bosses.
Kind of hard to find Singapore bosses and Singapore workers these days.
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when fw bear the brunt, the police step in.
when locals find their jobs taken by ft, who cares? ......hehehehe
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dont seem convincing leh.
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470,000 yuan ($72,400)?!!?
I can start a coffee shop liao. no need to toil for so many hours
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Originally posted by Jiani:
470,000 yuan ($72,400)?!!?
I can start a coffee shop liao. no need to toil for so many hours
these are mainly uneducated people. they are not tech savvy or educated like you and i.
whats so surprising about them getting 'conned' by those greedy contractors?
if there's anything we can learn from all this that's we should appreciate how 'lucky' we are to be borne in singapore.