Tan Chuan Jin: The Minister of Motherhood Statements

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

Motherhood statements from the Ministry of Manpower are dime a dozen. Its corporate communications department probably has a standard template it gives the minister to address tricky issues which it wants to obfuscate. Some of the common stock responses, which you will find in many of their press releases and speeches often goes like this

“MOM takes a serious view of employers who do not comply with our employment laws.”

“MOM will not hesitate to take action against employers who fail to pay their workers on time.”

“MOM would not hesitate to take stern actions against errant employers."

The Ministry often publicises its enforcement efforts which would usually receive a lot of attention in the mainstream media. While it is good to raise awareness of such cases, it should not mislead anyone to believe that the Ministry is actually addressing the systemic nature of these problems. In the rare occasion when statistics are revealed, they are usually not disaggregated, making it difficult to ascertain if enforcement is effective.

Evidence of the government’s weak enforcement efforts surfaced in a Lianhe Zaobao article published in 2010, where it was revealed that the Ministry of Manpower received 3700 salary related complaints from foreign workers in 2009. Yet, in a report to the human rights council of the United Nations at the Universal Periodic Review, it was further revealed that only 4 employers were prosecuted in that year for failure to pay salaries to workers. This means that only 0.1% of employers were taken to task. Even if not all the claims received were legitimate, 4 prosecutions out of 3700 complaints is dismally low. Up till now, there is still no indication or evidence to show that more errant employers have been taken to task for not adhering to Employment Act standards.

- https://www.facebook.com/notes/jolov...51716740913016


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