In celebration of the Festival of Lights, Singaporean and foreign volunteers gathered at the Sri Srinivasa Perumal Temple in Little India to serve 5,000 migrant workers a free dinner on 26 October 2014.
Celebrating Deepavali with Migrant Friends
Jointly organised by the Migrant Workers’ Centre (MWC) and the Hindu Endowments Board (HEB), the Migrant Workers’ Deepavali Celebration 2014 is aimed at enhancing social integration by fostering closer relations between the local and migrant community as well as celebrating Deepavali with our Hindu migrant friends who are far away from home.
At the event, Guest-of-Honour Mr Lim Swee Say, Secretary-General of the National Trades Union Congress and special guests, HEB Chairman Jayachandran, MWC Chairman Yeo Guat Kwang, Hindu Advisory Board Chairman Rajan Krishnan, Migrant Workers’ Assistance Fund Chairman Bennett Neo and Sri Srinivasa Perumal Temple Chairman Vellayappan joined volunteers in dishing out free vegetarian dinners to guests. After serving the workers, Mr Lim and other special guests joined migrant worker guests for dinner.
Pre-departure Worker Rights Video to Target Root of Common Problems
In MWC’s experience and interactions with migrant workers, it has found that upstream malpractices in the migrant workers’ home countries, such as over-charging of agency fees, and false promises about working terms and conditions in Singapore, have caused many of the downstream problems and challenges they face after they arrive. More than two-thirds of the workers MWC assists have shared that they started working in Singapore with large agency fees which can take some as long as an entire work-permit term of two years to recoup. While organisations like MWC can seek recourse for abuses that take place in Singapore, there is little that they can do to recover overpaid agency fees in foreign countries.
In view of this, MWC worked closely with the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) to produce a video containing important employment-related information such as common overseas recruitment malpractices and workers’ rights and entitlements in Singapore. The MWC Pre-departure Video seeks to act as an added layer of protection for migrant workers and will be made available in the native languages of the key vulnerable nationalities.
With MOM’s support, MWC aims to secure screenings for workers prior to departure in their home countries where they still have avenues to seek recourse before they lose the opportunity when they board the plane for Singapore. MWC hopes to eventually screen the video on a compulsory basis at as many departure points as possible, including overseas Construction Skills Testing Centres.
Explaining the significance of the video, MWC Chairman Yeo Guat Kwang said: “We need to target the root of the problems they face which we believe often lies in the recruitment malpractices in migrant workers’ home countries. The large majority of workers tell us they overpaid agency fees and many say they leave the country without employment documents stating terms and conditions – these are things we are very concenrned about. We want to prevent workers from discarding the one chance to try and recover over-payment to their recruiters before departure. We hope that every migrant worker would have viewed and in some way benefitted from the video by 2016.”
The video is available on MWC’s web portal and on YouTube at bit.ly/MWCpredeparture. MWC will also work with MOM to make the video available on MOM’s website in future.
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