It Is Our Moral Obligation To Treat Migrant Workers Decently

This letter was published in The Straits Times on 4 April 2009.

THE recent call by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to world leaders to "restore a sense of morality to the bruised financial world system" echoes our own urgent appeal to all policymakers and decision-makers in government, business and society in Singapore.

For the past six months, Home (Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics) has been rendering assistance to some 500 migrant workers. For many, being deported home is equivalent to sending them straight to hell. Many have sold or mortgaged their land, homes and prized possessions to pay huge sums of money to foreign agents just to work here. They have also invested months of training to acquire the skills needed. Upon arrival and issued with work permits by the Manpower Ministry, they are placed with employers who provide them paid work for barely three months or fewer.

A work permit that restricts job mobility enslaves workers to a morally and financially "bankrupt" employer, and the workers have no choice but to wait for work. Waiting without work for months and with only one meal a day in their dormitories, these men are left with nothing but debts riding high in their own home countries. The outrage is aggravated when they are also made to pay for their accommodation and end up eventually indebted to their employers.

For some, the months of futile waiting have driven them in desperation to Home. We respond to their plight with temporary shelter and assistance to lodge their cases with the authorities. Meetings after meetings at the ministry have now ended with paltry returns on their salary claims and the hard-hitting message: "Go home."

Home appeals only for a sense of morality for these helpless victims. As a society, we have the responsibility to people who have served us well. Our country has collected large sums of foreign worker levies over the years. Should not this money be expended for foreign worker welfare in these extraordinary times? Should we not be compassionate in the exercise of power in extreme hardships?

Public governance is after all about honesty and decency. It is morally outrageous that foreign workers should be forced to return home to face financial suicide. Let us be at least decent in these awful times.