Singapore labour body to launch job placement for abandoned Indian, Bangladeshi workers

Job placements for more than 400 migrant workers, mostly from India and Bangladesh, linked to a case of alleged abandonment by companies owned by an Indian national, will begin next week, Singapore's main labour organisation said on Friday.

The workers were hired by three firms with a common director who is believed to have fled the country without paying them for several months.

"On jobs, we have received interest from over 80 companies with close to 400 vacancies, and our unions are sending in more referrals," the Secretary General of the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC), Ng Chee Meng, said in a social media post.


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He further said that the organisation, along with an NGO, Migrant Workers' Centre (MWC), will be relocating the migrant workers to a single lodging facility by this weekend.

Ng added that the Tripartite Alliance for Dispute Management (TADM) was at Tuas View Dormitory, where the migrant workers are currently accommodated, to help the remaining workers file their claims directly.

The TADM is a joint effort by the Ministry of Manpower, NTUC and the Singapore National Employers Federation to help employees and employers with services to resolve employment disputes.

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"Job placement kicks off next week. We will make sure no one is left behind in this process," The Straits Times quoted Ng as saying.

On Wednesday, the workers were given SGD 100 in cash and SGD 100 in supermarket vouchers by NTUC and MWC to help meet daily expenses.

These migrant workers were not paid by their employers for three to four months, following which they approached the Ministry of Manpower earlier this week to recover their salaries.

SK Industries, KPA Engineering, and VVR Plant Engineering are the firms involved in this case. All three firms share a common director, Ramu Palani Velu, an Indian origin man, who is uncontactable and is believed to have left Singapore, according to media reports.