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Tag: foreigners

  • Jobless And Unpaid By Employers, Bangladeshi Workers Faces Daunting Fate

    Jobless And Unpaid By Employers, Bangladeshi Workers Faces Daunting Fate

    At least six Bangladeshi workers may have to go home as soon as next week, if they are not able to find a new employer.

    Their previous employers, HBB Engineering and C-Plus Engineering, owed them between four and eight months’ pay.

    In total, 31 workers from the two companies have been affected.

    While the workers have received a portion of their pay, some have been out of work since January after their work permits were cancelled by their employers.

    Though the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) informed them that they had two weeks to approach any employment agency for help, the workers have not been able to find alternative employment.

    A spokesman for MOM said the six workers will have the remainder of their salaries paid through insurers later when they either find a new employer or when they return home.

    But the workers will be going home to a mountain of debts they’d hoped to pay off with a steady job in Singapore.

    Mr Prodhan Abdur Razzak, 36, was an excavator operator with HBB Engineering. He came to Singapore last May and stopped receiving his salary in July. He said his employer cancelled his work permit in January.

    He has received $1,773 – half of the pay he is owed by the company – but has a $4,700 debt to pay off back home, consisting of a bank loan he took to pay agent fees to travel to Singapore and medical bills incurred by his family.

    The Straits Times reported on March 10 that the companies are being investigated by MOM.

    Mr Razzak, who comes from the Chandpur district in Bangladesh, told The New Paper: “I asked my boss for some money to pay the medical bills, but he always said he had no money.

    “I even cried but, in the end, I had to borrow from a friend to pay the bills.”

    Mr Razzak added that his S Pass expires on March 30.

    His is one of 4,500 salary-related claims involving foreign workers that MOM has received every year for the last three years. MOM said more than 95 per cent of claims are resolved every year.

    Non-profit organisation Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2) told TNP it handled 376 salary cases last year and the 2017 figures already look set to surpass this number.

    Mr A.B.M. Rafiqul Islam, the owner of both HBB Engineering and C-Plus Engineering, was not contactable for comment yesterday.

    Migrant Workers’ Centre (MWC) chairman Yeo Guat Kwang told TNP that, while the centre is able to actively source for employment for the workers through its network of industry associations, the “success rate is generally not high” and called for a “multi-stakeholder, collaborative approach” to the issue.

    “MWC plans to partner the industry associations, as well as the MOM, in exploring and considering additional measures that the stakeholders may take to improve our system to better assist and facilitate migrant workers to secure alternative employment,” said Mr Yeo.

     

    Source: www.tnp.sg

  • Give Singaporeans A Chance, Don’t Compromise Safety And Security By Hiring Foreign APOs

    Give Singaporeans A Chance, Don’t Compromise Safety And Security By Hiring Foreign APOs

    Singapore security and safety should be taken care by Singaporeans or at least SPR. No ..No to foreigners! Auxillary police companies should redesign the work of auxillaey police officers so that they will attract more Singaporeans into the workforce.

    They should emulate the Singapore Police Force or better than SPF. Offer better worklife balance and higher remuneration due to the high risk and high demand of work.

    I am sure out of thousands Singaporean retrenched workers in 2016 , ord NSmen and young school leavers and graduates could be attracted if they are given better worklife balance and emplyment package.

    There are something wrong with the HR departments in these large companies. There are many potential Singapore candidates who have applied and never even shortlisted for interviews. Why they making difficult for Singaporeans to work in their companies.

    They don’t even give opportunities to many of the Singaporean applicants who were rejected. They set high requirements for Singaporean applicants and substandard requirements for foreign applicants. We can see that in the transport and service industries where majority foreign workers can’t even speak English being employed against Singaporeans who can speak English.

    Govt should scrutinise the HR practices of these companies….mabye the management aren’t Singaporeans and building their foreign based of workers here.

     

    Source: Baharudin Nordin

  • Uniquely Singapore Or Another Fiasco?

    Uniquely Singapore Or Another Fiasco?

    There are more than 2m foreigners in the island of 3.5m population. Several hundred thousands of these foreigners from half past six countries and half past six universities are gainfully employed, happily employed, replacing the supposedly better qualified Singaporeans in their jobs. And the Singaporeans, the experienced and well qualified, the young graduates, are crying for jobs. They are unemployable, underemployed, they are mismatched!

    And all we heard of is that it is all because of mismatch. And these jobless Singaporeans are told to go overseas to find their rainbows. Not in Singapore. They are mismatched, they are misfits in their own countries. Their hundreds of thousands dollar education and degrees are useless, cannot eat, cannot find a job. They are only good enough to compete overseas, forget about in the US and Europe if they can’t even find a job in home town, unable to compete with half past six degree foreigners.

    They should go to third world countries to sell their skills and earn cheap currencies. And don’t think of coming back, don’t think of earning and saving enough to be able to survive back home. The cheap currencies they earned will become cheaper when brought home to spend in the world’s most expensive city. They are failures in Singapore and how could they expect the third world countries to hire them and pay them well? Even if they wanted to, they could not afford to.

    Singapore is not for Singaporeans. Singaporeans are only good enough to work in third world countries. And the govt knows that and are helping them with a lot of courses and training programmes to equip them to survive in third world countries. Probably they will teach them how to lower their expectations, how to live life in a third world countries, how to get use to third world standard of living, how to tighten their belts.

    Singapore is good only for foreigners, especially those from third world countries. These are the highly skilled and trained talents Singapore needs, with half past six degrees. Though they came from half past six universities, they have no mismatch problems. They matched beautifully with the needs of this first world city. The proof, a few hundred thousands of them are already here, employed in jobs that mismatched Singaporeans cannot do.

    Did anyone say Uniquely Singapore? With so many silly mismatched PMETs, what more proof is needed to confirm that Singaporeans are daft? The daft Singaporeans don’t even know why they are unemployable, why they became mismatched, misfits. The only thing they know, is that they are told that this is the reason. And everyone accepts this silly reason with no further question asked. Several hundred thousands of half past six foreigners are fit, not mismatched and taking over the jobs of the misfit Singaporeans. To laugh or to cry?

    And we are boasting about having three of the world’s best universities run by foreigners, the bulk of the academic staff and administrative staff is foreigners. I am waiting for the Parliament to be taken over by foreigners and pronouncing that Singaporeans are misfits to be in Parliament and should go elsewhere to live. This is only a matter of time.

    Where is the real mismatch?

    Chua Chin Leng aka Redbean

    *The writer blogs at My Singapore News.

     

    Source: www.tremeritus.com

  • MOH: 50% Of Zika Cases Involve Foreign Nationals

    MOH: 50% Of Zika Cases Involve Foreign Nationals

    Half of the Zika cases in Singapore are foreigners who live or work here, said the Ministry of Health (MOH) on Thursday (Sept 1).

    Out of 115 cases, 57 are foreigners. The largest group is 23 people from China, followed by 15 from India and 10 from Bangladesh. Six cases are Malaysians, and one case each from Indonesia, Myanmar and Taiwan.

    “All had mild illness. Most have recovered while the rest are recovering well,” said the MOH spokesperson.

    Earlier on Sunday (Aug 28), the MOH said that 36 foreign workers at a construction site at 60 Sims Drive had been infected.

    The ministry announced Singapore’s first case of locally-transmitted Zika on Saturday, involving a 47-year-old Malaysian woman who lived in Block 102 Aljunied Crescent.

    Meanwhile, Malaysia reported its first Zika case on Thursday, involving a 58-year-old woman who visited her daughter in Singapore on Aug 19. Her daughter, a resident in Paya Lebar which has seen Zika cases, was confirmed as being infected with the mosquito-borne virus on Aug 30.

    In Singapore, efforts to contain Zika’s spread continued on Thursday morning with thermal fogging operations observed in the areas surrounding Aljunied Crescent and Bedok North Ave 3, which has emerged as a potential cluster after three confirmed cases were reported. Health and environment officers were also spotted lifting drain covers to check for any breeding sites.

    Residents in Bedok who spoke to TODAY on Thursday were largely unruffled by the latest development.

    “Life still goes on… It’s just a pity that the virus has hit our island and spread like wildfire,” said Mr Stephen Gomez, 61, a resident at Blk 402 Bedok North Ave 3.

    Housewife Madam Zhao Hai Ying, 27, said she would take more precautions by checking if her two young children had any mosquito bites. “But you can’t be so (fixated) on this, we just have to be a little more careful,” she added.

    Office manager Sally Lim, 43, said that Zika was not “as serious” as SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), and that there was “nothing to be worried about”.

    However, she noted that some of her relatives who had originally intended to visit her this weekend at her home in Bedok had decided to cancel the visit.

     

    Source: www.todayonline.com

  • Give Free Food To Foreign Workers Because #itfeelsgoodtodogood

    Give Free Food To Foreign Workers Because #itfeelsgoodtodogood

    Was at Starbucks this afternoon to get coffee for tennis-weary parents when I saw the counter staff clearing away all the food as they were closing.

    I asked if they would let me take it away for migrant workers and they sweetly agreed. So they handed me 2 bags of pastries, muffins and sandwiches (all very kindly warmed up) and I was lucky enough to find workers right down the road.

    The workers were delighted of course, and as I turned back after handing them the food I saw them all happily snacking, sitting on the pavement.

    Am going to try and do this every Saturday at 4pm (closing time for this Starbucks) if I can. And any of you who are at a food-bearing venue near closing time, do try it because ‪#‎itfeelsgoodtodogood‬.

     

    Source: Itsrainingraincoats