One of the most prominent issues recognized is the high level of recruitment fees that migrant workers, more specifically those applying for a Work Permit (WP) pay for their employment in Singapore. Local NGO’s such as TWC2 have conducted multiple surveys amongst workers and identified it takes approximately 16-17 months before workers have repaid their recruitment fee. Officially the Employment Agency Act (1958) has a cap of maximum of no more than the sum of one month’s salary per year of their contract. The difficulty of this issue lies in its transnational nature; employment agencies sending worker to Singapore whilst their offices are located outside of Singapore do not fall in the country’s jurisdiction. Another identified issue is passport confiscation; ‘while the rules stipulate that the documents of a “foreign employee” must be returned “as soon as practicable” upon employment, a “reasonable excuse” allows agencies to limit the movement of their workers. In a small selection of cases kickbacks were identified; where money was deduced from the workers salary illegally in order to recover recruitment cost such as the worker levy and bondage. Most problems have to do with ‘low-skilled’ workers seeking employment in Singapore under the Work Permit (WP) visa and not amongst those working under Employment Passes (EP) and S-pass Visa.
Find out more about the degree of respect for workers rights in this country based on ITUC Global Rights Index here.