Singaporean dream sours for some Bangladeshi workers as they go home with big debts
SINGAPORE/DHAKA: Mohammad Ashadul Islam placed all his hopes for a better life for his family in Bangladesh on getting a construction job in Singapore.
He sold his father’s land and fish farm and also borrowed money from banks and relatives to pay S$17,000 (US$12,000) in fees to multiple agencies who helped arrange the job and his trip to the island state early last year.
But in December, his employer told him that there wasn’t enough work and he was laid off from a job doing a range of tasks, such as directing traffic around building sites, and operating excavators.
Islam was given a month by Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower to find another job but, unable to do so, he returned home still owing S$6,000. He had only earned S$5,000 during his time away – based on basic pay of just S$18 a day and overtime of S$3 per hour.
For Singapore, a system of temporary labour to do many jobs in the construction, shipping, manufacturing and service industries – including hotels and restaurants – works as an effective buffer.
When times are good it means Singapore can fill jobs that would otherwise be vacant but when the economy is weak and unemployment rises – as has been happening in the past year – it is easy to cut back on foreign workers.
However, for the workers it is a brutal system that can leave them in big debt and regretting they ever made the move to Singapore.
“I go back for what? No fish, no land. I go back or die, same-same,” Islam said in an interview just be- fore heading back to Bangladesh.
Islam’s former boss, Maqbool Ahmed Khan, who owns building company Elchim Construction Services, confirmed the Bangladeshi’s story.
Khan said he faced a ‘market slowdown’ late last year, without elaborating.
The Singapore Contractors Association Ltd and The Association of Singapore Marine Industries declined to comment.
Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower said the agency fees foreign workers incur in their home countries are beyond its jurisdiction.
“We hope that source countries would do more to address the issue of high agency fees incurred, and we will refer cases to their embassies here for follow up where appropriate,” it said in an emailed statement to Reuters.
Islam, 25, is among thousands of migrant workers, mainly from Bangladesh and India, who left Singapore’s shipyards and building sites last year because of a 30 per cent contraction in the marine sector largely related to a drop in demand from the energy industry, and a downturn in construction.
It was the first year since 2009 when the number of low-skilled jobs taken by foreigners fell here.
Reuters interviewed around two dozen Bangladeshi workers who were laid off recently in Singapore, and many of them provide similar pictures of growing hardship. — Reuters