"How many days of annual leave do I actually have?”, “With only primary school education, you mean I can still go back to school now? These are some common repeated exclamations of low wage casual and contract workers in Singapore. The Labour Movement’s Unit for Contract and Casual Workers (UCCW) has been actively engaging this group of the workforce with various means since its inception to better educate them on various ways to improve their lives.
The launch of “My Little Handbook” on 30 October 2011 is one of the ways of reaching out to this group of workers. Packed in a handy size, the book contains very useful information to help contract and casual workers get around handling unfair employers, and at the same time, keeping an eye on what they should not lose out on.
Information on all their statutory entitlements like Central Provident Fund (CPF) contributions and payouts through the Workfare Income Supplement (WIS) scheme and the Workfare Training Support (WTS) scheme is spelled out clearly in the book.
Going back to the classroom after some three decades may not be easy at all for these workers, thus “My Little Handbook” also provides telephone numbers so that these workers can ring up to seek help when they want to look for suitable training courses and classes.
And that’s not all – the guidebook also carries inspiring stories of low wage contract and casual workers who have walked over barriers to be where they are today. Madam Fatimah Mohamed, 51, is one such successful beneficiary. She was a contract cleaner who earned $650 then. Today, she is an Operations Support Officer with Seacare Manpower Services Private Limited, earning $1,000 per month. She took up training to brush up on her English literacy with NTUC’s UCCW and NTUC LearningHub Private Limited, and that was the start of her journey towards better skills and a better life.
UCCW hopes that there will be more workers who have similar career experiences like Madam Fatimah, and hence, the handbook is a tool to help workers embark on this journey. To further aid their understanding, three versions of the book have been printed and given out – there are translations of the information in Mandarin, Malay and Tamil, together with English text.
“Where there is English, there should be Chinese. For old people like us who do not really know English well, this book is definitely easier to refer to and I can understand the contents better as well,” said Madam Lai Kuen Fang, 59, a contract cleaner.
Madam Lai also attended the “Better Skills, Better Future” Seminar 2011 in Mandarin, organised by NTUC’s UCCW and other partners, on the same day that the guidebook was launched.
Said UCCW Director Sapari Zainal: “We believe that providing benefits to the low wage workers is only short term assistance to them. To improve their current condition, the workers have to become more self-reliant and constantly upgrade themselves.”
UCCW held these seminars in the three vernacular languages in the month of October.
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“It acts as a straightforward, all-inclusive guidebook that is packaged in bite-size for reader friendliness. Through this guidebook, workers can know more about the respective agencies along with their contact details. “My Little Handbook” is meant to be a simple and useful guide for all our low wage, contract and casual workers.”
Zainal Sapari, Unit for Contract and Casual Workers (UCCW) Director
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To find out more about "My Little Handbook", download the PDF (English) copy below.
