After shattering his left heel bone when he fell off a ladder,
Chinese national Ah Ping's already difficult life as a labourer in
Singapore took a sharp turn for the worse.
His Singaporean contractor boss refused to file an injury
compensation claim with the manpower ministry, fearing it would
sully the company's record. When Ah Ping applied for it himself
after nine days in hospital, things turned ugly.
"He came up to me while I was resting and asked me why I filed
the claim," said the 23-year-old from Shandong province, in eastern
China, his youthful face creased in a frown.
"He got angry and slapped me in the face, then he raised his
fists and punched me," said Ah Ping, who cannot give his full name
because he is assisting police with investigations.
Fleeing the dank, mosquito-ridden warehouse he says his boss
forced him to stay in, Ah Ping went to aid group Humanitarian
Organisation for Migration Economics (HOME) seeking refuge in their
shelter for exploited foreign workers.
Social workers in Singapore are reporting a rise in the number
of foreign workers such as Ah Ping who approach them for help with
cases ranging from wage disputes to assault.
Maligned by some Singaporeans for supposedly stealing jobs and
causing overcrowding, foreigners holding work permits numbered more
than 870,000 at the end of 2010 out of Singapore's total population
of 5.1 million.
They often do the dirty, difficult and dangerous jobs that
Singaporeans shun, toiling as maids, construction hands, street
sweepers, garbage collectors, cooks and dishwashers as well as
lower-end factory workers.
Most come from China, South Asia and Southeast Asia.
"We see an average of about 120 to 150 workers a month... four
years ago it was less, maybe about 100," said Jolovan Wham,
executive director of HOME.
"The cases that we see are mostly about labour exploitation," he
told AFP in his office as more than 10 workers waited their turn to
consult him and his colleagues about their woes.
Even though the manpower ministry reported a fall in foreign
worker complaints from a three-year high of 3,774 in 2009 to 3,200
last year, Wham said the figure was "not reliable" as it focused on
only salary-related issues.
Wham said the liberalisation of Singapore's immigration policies
in recent years to bring in more workers to power the
labour-starved economy contributed to the growing number of abuse
cases.
"The government sees foreign workers as economic digits, here to
help grow the economy, so they look at them as commodities," he
said.
The government has slowed down the intake of foreigners since
the 2009 recession but says the economy cannot function without a
steady stream of blue-collar workers.
The presence of so many foreign workers in a densely populated
city-state has become a hot issue in Singapore and the debate
reached a crescendo in the campaign for last month's general
elections, raising fears of more abuse.
Migrant worker rights advocacy group Transient Workers Count Too
(TWC2) reported an increase in the number of foreign workers
seeking help to 2,178 last year, from 2,087 in 2009, and fears the
number may rise again.
TWC2 executive director Vincent Wijeysingha, who lost as an
opposition candidate in the May election, said the manner in which
immigration was discussed during the campaign could hurt foreign
workers even more.
"Unfortunately what the elections did, and we politicians must
shoulder our share of responsibility for it, is that a xenophobic
approach to foreigners could become widespread," Wijeysingha told
AFP.
"In other countries, when a politician says something that could
be viewed as xenophobic, a spike in hate crime sometimes results.
It may not be entirely different in Singapore."
Before the elections, xenophobic sentiment had surfaced in
scattered incidents, including one in 2008 when residents of an
affluent suburb protested against the building of a foreign worker
dormitory in their estate.
The residents petitioned the government to drop the plan, saying
the dormitory -- separated from the estate by a road -- would
"create security and social problems and spoil the ambiance of the
estate".
Authorities still approved the project but advised the dormitory
operator to consider chartering buses to ferry workers to popular
destinations in order to prevent them from congregating within the
estate.
Ah Ping, the Chinese worker who accused his boss of beating him
up over an injury compensation claim, now worries about how he is
going to repay a 470,000 yuan ($72,400) bank loan he took out to
pay a middleman to get a job in Singapore.
An only child, he also needs to support his parents, whom he has
not seen since he came to Singapore two-and-a-half years ago.
"Sometimes I listen to the old songs my mum used to sing on the
radio and...," Ah Ping mused, his voice trailing off as he looked
away into the distance.
-- Yahoo!
