Engagement #2

I applied as a volunteer for the organisation Transient Workers Count Too, which works for migrant workers. Due to Covid-19,  I was unable to work as a volunteer, but I was able to join in the orientation session. The volunteer work I was planning to participate in was called the Cuffs Road Project, which serves food to migrant workers who currently do not have a job, mostly due to the fact that they have filed an injury or salary claim to the Ministry of Manpower. The job for the volunteers is to fill out the cards and documents with the workers’ status and case information. Ms Fordyce, the president of TWC2 explained us on each information to write. There were a couple of things that I thought were particularly interesting.

The first thing was about the special passes. Workers who are currently working on an injury or salary claim are issued a special pass by the MOM which are not work passes. Therefore, when holding this pass, the workers are not permitted to find a new job, however, at the same time, there are not supposed to be sent back to their home countries when their cases are active. There are special passes which are issued by the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority, which they are jailed and caned for if they had stayed in Singapore after more than 90 days of the expiry date. When I heard about this information, I was first surprised by how common case salaries and injured salaries were, that there were enough to keep the volunteers busy during the morning and evening. The fact that the workers cannot work while they have the special pass was also very significant for me since it meant the workers do not have much of an income to rely on until they have their case cleared. Not all migrant workers have the amount of money they wish from the employers, meaning they would have to go back to their home countries with loss and dissatisfaction. Throughout the whole process of their claims, most workers seem to live in a very constrained and inconvenient situation.

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