Foreign Workers Seek Help

Reuters ran this story on 16 February 2009:

Foreign workers seek help

SOME 50 unemployed Bangladeshi migrant workers gathered in front of Singapore's Ministry of Manpower on Monday, urging the government to give them work and help retrieve overdue pay from previous employers.

The shipyard workers said they were promised new jobs by ministry officials when they were moved out of their employers' dormitories after their firms went bankrupt and could not pay them.

'No job, no money, only eating and sleeping,' said Mr Tutul Abdul Manan, a 31-year-old who said he gave up his temporary job with the government in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka and paid some $9,000 for a brokerage fee to work in Singapore.

The Bangladeshi migrants were allowed to meet officials after an hour of waiting.

'We are trying to help them negotiate with their employer discreetly. But they have become more and more savvy by inviting the media here,' one government official said at the gathering.

Singapore's construction, shipyard and manufacturing industries were once red hot, hiring almost 800,000 migrants in 2007.

But as the economy slid into recession last year, demand for labour dived and major projects were cancelled or delayed.

Human rights groups say many of the world's estimated 100 million migrant workers are in dire predicaments as economic woes in the Gulf, Singapore and Taiwan lead to mass layoffs of labourers from across Asia.