Tech For Good

Migrant workers falling prey to grasping recruiters may become a thing of the past, thanks to the wave of digitally-based social enterprises that focus on ethical employment.

- Cara Yap

Joshua Lum has put his arm around distraught migrant workers trapped in a gyre of injustices. Among the friends he’s consoled is a construction labourer who’d paid substantial agent fees to secure a job, only to discover discrepancies between what was promised and his actual salary and working hours. “He cried to me over the phone; how could this happen to him, given that he’d been in Singapore for eight years and knew the system well?” relates the rangy millennial.

It’s a well-worn tale laced with pathos, but one which has drawn greater awareness in a pandemic that has thrown migrant worker welfare firmly into the spotlight. Overnight, reports of foreign construction labourers sequestered in dormitories under untenable living conditions triggered a gush of support from solicitous individuals. A community even went into overdrive with their care packages and outreach efforts.

Underlying the debate over greater parity and who should pay for it is the larger spectre of unethical employment practices plaguingt the country’s transient workforce.

A 2021 report by the Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (HOME) suggests that migrant domestic workers typically pay their agents six to eight months of salary to secure a job in Singapore. In the absence of a breakdown of their expenses, overcharging is prevalent. The problem affects all sectors, including the domestic and construction sectors.

There may be a sea change afoot, however. Buoyed by pandemic-induced digital transformation and tightened regulations, tech-savvy social entrepreneurs are working to steer migrant employment towards a less unscrupulous paradigm.