foreign bodies
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One in three people living here today was born outside Singapore. These foreign-born folk include new citizens, permanent residents, foreign workers and students. With their numbers rising fast, Insight addresses some of your burning questions on the population shifts.
By Li Xue Ying
HERE are now a total of 4.84million people living in Singapore.
Of these, 35per cent are foreign-born.
1 Who are they?
They fall into three groups: new citizens, permanent residents (PRs) and non-residents.
In the first six months of this year, Singapore granted citizenship to 9,619 foreigners. The total number of new citizens since 2001 is 81,553.
There are 478,200 PRs here.
So, what are these new citizens and PRs like?
Figures just released by the National Population Secretariat (NPS) indicate that they tend to be better-educated than born-and-bred Singaporeans.
Take those granted PR and citizenship this year, for example: 77per cent of the new PRs and 62per cent of the new citizens aged 20 and above have post-secondary education. The corresponding figure for existing Singapore citizens is 36per cent.
While declining to give a breakdown of where these new residents hail from, the NPS says most are from South-east, South and East Asia. A smaller number are from the Americas, Oceania and Europe.
Public data shows that the number of new immigrants from South Asia is so significant that it has caused a shift in the ethnic make-up of the population.
Ethnic Indians now comprise 8.9per cent of the resident population, which is made up of both citizens and PRs, up from 7.1per cent in 1990.
The bulk of foreigners here are non-residents. Their numbers have risen to 1.2million - an all-time high.
Within this pool, there are two groups.
The first is here on a transient basis. This group is made up of work permit holders here to work as construction workers and maids. As of December last year, there were 757,000 work permit holders.
The second group of people are regarded as potential PRs and new citizens. There are 143,000 such foreigners here on employment passes and another 85,000 foreign students.
2 Has it become easier to obtain citizenship or permanent residency?
3 Do we really need immigrants? What if we close the door on them?
4 Are there other ways to keep the economy growing?
5 What can be done about the stresses caused by a rising number of foreigners?
6 What will Singapore look like in the future?
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Long run I think Singapore society will be destroyed due to too many non-Singaporeans in Singapore.
It can still function as place to do business or make money but to call it a state with citizens prepared to defend it, that may no longer be possible as all cultural roots, all cultural identity had already been finished off.
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Aging population...
Is...
Coming soon...Stay tune! lol
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Originally posted by soleachip:
One in three people living here today was born outside Singapore. These foreign-born folk include new citizens, permanent residents, foreign workers and students. With their numbers rising fast, Insight addresses some of your burning questions on the population shifts.
By Li Xue Ying
HERE are now a total of 4.84million people living in Singapore.
Of these, 35per cent are foreign-born.
1 Who are they?
They fall into three groups: new citizens, permanent residents (PRs) and non-residents.
In the first six months of this year, Singapore granted citizenship to 9,619 foreigners. The total number of new citizens since 2001 is 81,553.
There are 478,200 PRs here.
So, what are these new citizens and PRs like?
Figures just released by the National Population Secretariat (NPS) indicate that they tend to be better-educated than born-and-bred Singaporeans.
Take those granted PR and citizenship this year, for example: 77per cent of the new PRs and 62per cent of the new citizens aged 20 and above have post-secondary education. The corresponding figure for existing Singapore citizens is 36per cent.
While declining to give a breakdown of where these new residents hail from, the NPS says most are from South-east, South and East Asia. A smaller number are from the Americas, Oceania and Europe.
Public data shows that the number of new immigrants from South Asia is so significant that it has caused a shift in the ethnic make-up of the population.
Ethnic Indians now comprise 8.9per cent of the resident population, which is made up of both citizens and PRs, up from 7.1per cent in 1990.
The bulk of foreigners here are non-residents. Their numbers have risen to 1.2million - an all-time high.
Within this pool, there are two groups.
The first is here on a transient basis. This group is made up of work permit holders here to work as construction workers and maids. As of December last year, there were 757,000 work permit holders.
The second group of people are regarded as potential PRs and new citizens. There are 143,000 such foreigners here on employment passes and another 85,000 foreign students.
2 Has it become easier to obtain citizenship or permanent residency?
3 Do we really need immigrants? What if we close the door on them?
4 Are there other ways to keep the economy growing?
5 What can be done about the stresses caused by a rising number of foreigners?
6 What will Singapore look like in the future?
Hey, you have interesting statistics. especially the part of post secondary education. can you tell me the source for that one? thanks!
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I did a simple experiment or should i say street polling.
in a bus, I close my eyes and open again. The 1st one i see I approach and ask if he is local born citizen. based on my rough statistics collection , 66% are foreigners.
But then may it is just what I encountered.
How about you guys try it . Act blur by asking for direction and then throw in the question. you may use this to understand more about the status quo.
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Source: The Straits Times
2 Has it become easier to obtain citizenship or permanent residency?
WITH the number of PRs and new citizens on the rise, the NPS says it is understandable that some people believe it has become easier to secure a red passport. But it stresses that the criteria are 'no less stringent' than before.
New residents are admitted on the basis of educational qualifications, their immediate and potential economic contributions and how well they and their family are likely to integrate into Singapore society.
The last factor is assessed on the basis of the applicant's length of stay here, the language he speaks, the culture he is from, whether or not he has family members here, and his contributions to society here. That would include his participation in grassroots and community work.
As Singaporeans become better educated, the NPS said, via e-mail, 'more will be expected of potential immigrants who wish to apply for PR and citizenship'.
It declined to give details on the number of applications and the success rate.
Ms Ragini Dhanvantray, managing director of Rikvin Consultancy, which helps facilitate immigration here, observes that the time it takes to obtain permanent residency has fallen.
'In the past, employment pass holders would apply for permanent residency only after working here for two years.
'Now, they can apply after just six months - and about 60 to 70per cent will get it,' she says.
3 Do we really need immigrants? What if we close the door on them?
IF SINGAPORE stopped accepting immigrants right now, deaths among citizens and PRs would overtake births in 12 years, says veteran demographer Saw Swee Hock.
That is based on a projection of a total fertility rate (TFR) of 1.31. Demographers use TFR to project the average number of babies that will be born to a woman in a population.
Singapore's TFR is now 1.29.
That means Singapore's population will start to shrink in 2020.
Even if the TFR goes up to 1.51, the population will still shrink - albeit later, in 2025.
Prof Saw, the author of a book entitled Population Of Singapore and a professorial fellow at the Institute of the South-east Asian Studies, thus states emphatically: 'We need foreigners, forever and ever.'
The need to grow Singapore's population is a function of the need to grow the economy, he notes.
Singapore Management University economist Hoon Hian Teck says that with the growing prominence of the services sector, the shortfall in skilled labour has become more acute.
'In addition, the economy has undergone an important shift from being a technology follower to one that also creates new technologies,' he adds.
That means placing a high value on skilled researchers, both local and foreign.
In an interview last year, National Population Committee chairman Wong Kan Seng calculated that for the economy to grow at 6per cent annually, Singapore needs an extra 87,300 workers each year.
The NPS notes that as a country without natural resources, Singapore needs to depend on human capital for growth. And the global competition for talent is intense, it adds.
'If Singapore does not welcome them, they will simply look elsewhere and compete against us.'
4 Are there other ways to keep the economy growing?
YES, say some experts.
One way is to increase labour productivity.
A country's economic growth is the sum of two factors - the size of the labour force and its productivity. So higher productivity can compensate for a smaller labour force.
Labour economist Hui Weng Tat, of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, who has served as a consultant to the Manpower Ministry, believes that this is the most 'desirable' strategy.
The share that labour productivity growth has contributed to Singapore's total economic growth has declined steadily over the past two decades.
Prof Hui charted the decline in a paper he co-wrote with economist Aamir Rafique Hashmi.
From 1995 to 2000, for instance, productivity growth averaged 2.5per cent, and accounted for 39.7per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) growth. That was down from 51.6per cent in the preceding five years.
The figure was also low compared with those in other developed economies.
For the same period from 1995 to 2000, productivity growth accounted for 60.1per cent of the United States' GDP growth, and 102.2per cent of Japan's.
Prof Hui projects that if Singapore's productivity growth can be boosted to account for 60per cent of GDP growth, the demand for foreign labour will steadily go down.
According to his projections, at current productivity growth rates, Singapore will need 2.78million foreign workers by 2034.
But if productivity were one percentage point higher, then Singapore would need only 1.48million foreign workers by 2034 - a difference of 1.3million workers.
But such a productivity boost could prove 'elusive', he says, as it depends on many factors, from infrastructure to workforce quality and fiscal incentives.
The NPS says that productivity improvement remains a key focus of the Government.
The second way to grow the economy without increasing the reliance on foreign labour is by encouraging older Singaporeans to work longer, and more women to return to the workforce, says Prof Saw.
The participation rates of both groups remain low compared with those of other countries.
The government has been trying to do both, and has made some progress.
But some, such as MP for Ang Mo Kio GRC Inderjit Singh, question if it is necessary to push so hard for growth year after year.
Mr Singh, a businessman, says: 'I personally feel that we have adopted a 'grow at all costs' economic policy.
'I would have preferred a more moderate growth and, therefore, a more moderate population growth.'
He believes that the decision to build two integrated resorts in one go and a new sports hub, and expand the transport infrastructure in a massive way, is a case of 'trying to do too much too quickly'.
Prof Hui says that in an island-state with a very high population density of 6,000persq km, 'it might be argued that the lower growth target path could in fact provide a higher standard of living in Singapore'.
But lawyer and Hong Kah GRC MP Alvin Yeo is not so sure.
'There is the concern that with a small, open economy like ours, which is so susceptible to external influences which are hard to predict, planning for very modest growth could result in substantial under-shooting of our targets.
'But this is perhaps an issue which we need to review from time to time, as our economy, and society, matures.'
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Originally posted by skythewood:
Hey, you have interesting statistics. especially the part of post secondary education. can you tell me the source for that one? thanks!
http://www.straitstimes.com/Insight/Story/STIStory_285636.html
I don't think this will help much. No further elaboration on education in the rest of the article.
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Prof Saw, the author of a book entitled Population Of Singapore and a professorial fellow at the Institute of the South-east Asian Studies, thus states emphatically: 'We need foreigners, forever and ever.'
The need to grow Singapore's population is a function of the need to grow the economy, he notes.
"Grow" economy by importing foreigners, he runs the risk of annihilation of Singapore.
That is a narrow point of view by Prof Saw, but PAP regime would agree with him.
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We have said that the culture of a civilization is created in its core area originally and moves outward into peripheral areas which thus become part of the civilization.
This movement of cultural elements is called "diffusion" by students of the subject. It is noteworthy that material elements of a culture, such as tools, weapons, vehicles, and such, diffuse more readily and thus more rapidly than do the nonmaterial elements such as ideas, art forms, religious outlook, or patterns of social behavior.
For this reason the peripheral portions of a civilization (such as Assyria in Mesopotamian Civilization, Rome or Spain in Classical Civilization, and the United States or Australia in Western Civilization) tend to have a somewhat cruder and more material culture than the core area of the same civilization.
Material elements of a culture also diffuse beyond the boundaries of a civilization into other societies, and do so much more readily than the nonmaterial elements of the culture.
For this reason the nonmaterial and spiritual elements of a culture are what give it its distinctive character rather than its tools and weapons which can be so easily exported to entirely different societies.
Thus, the distinctive character of Western Civilization rests on its Christian heritage, its scientific outlook, its humanitarian elements, and its distinctive point of view in regard to the rights of the individual and respect for women rather than in such material things as firearms, tractors, plumbing fixtures, or skyscrapers, all of which are exportable commodities.
The export of material elements in a culture, across its peripheral areas and beyond, to the peoples of totally different societies has strange results.
As elements of material culture move from core to periphery inside a civilization, they tend, in the long run, to strengthen the periphery at the expense of the core because the core is more hampered in the use of material innovations by the strength of past vested interests and because the core devotes a much greater part of its wealth and energy to nonmaterial culture.
Thus, such aspects of the Industrial Revolution as automobiles and radios are European rather than American inventions, but have been developed and utilized to a far greater extent in America because this area was not hampered in their use by surviving elements of feudalism, of church domination, of rigid class distinctions (for example, in education), or by widespread attention to music, poetry, art, or religion such as we find in Europe.
A similar contrast can be seen in Classical Civilization between Greek and Roman or in Mesopotamian Civilization between Sumerian and Assyrian or in Mayan Civilization between Mayan and Aztec.
The diffusion of culture elements beyond the boundaries of one society into the culture of another society presents quite a different case. The boundaries between societies present relatively little hindrance to the diffusion of material elements, and relatively greater hindrance to the diffusion of nonmaterial elements.
Indeed, it is this fact which determines the boundary of the society, for, if the nonmaterial elements also diffused, the new area into which they flowed would be a peripheral portion of the old society rather than a part of a quite different society.
The diffusion of material elements from one society to another has a complex effect on the importing society. In the short run it is usually benefitted by the importation, but in the long run it is frequently disorganized and weakened.
When white men first came to North America, material elements from Western Civilization spread rapidly among the different Indian tribes.
The Plains Indians, for example, were weak and impoverished before 1543, but in that year the horse began to diffuse northward from the Spaniards in Mexico. Within a century the Plains Indians were raised to a much higher standard of living (because of ability to hunt buffalo from horseback) and were immensely strengthened in their ability to resist Americans coming westward across the continent.
In the meantime, the trans-Appalachian Indians who had been very powerful in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries began to receive firearms, steel traps, measles, and eventually whiskey from the French and later the English by way of the St. Lawrence.
These greatly weakened the woods Indians of the trans-Appalachian area and ultimately weakened the Plains Indians of the trans-Mississippi area, because measles and whiskey were devastating and demoralizing and because the use of traps and guns by certain tribes made them dependent on whites for supplies at the same time that they allowed them to put great physical pressure on the more remote tribes which had not yet received guns or traps.
Any united front of reds against whites was impossible, and the Indians were disrupted, demoralized, and destroyed.
In general, importation of an element of material culture from one society to another is helpful to the importing society in the long run only if it is
(a) productive,
(b) can be made within the society itself, and
(c) can be fitted into the nonmaterial culture of the importing society without demoralizing it.
The destructive impact of Western Civilization upon so many other societies rests on its ability to demoralize their ideological and spiritual culture as much as its ability to destroy them in a material sense with firearms.
When one society is destroyed by the impact of another society, the people are left in a debris of cultural elements derived from their own shattered culture as well as from the invading culture.
These elements generally provide the instruments for fulfilling the material needs of these people, but they cannot be organized into a functioning society because of the lack of an ideology and spiritual cohesive.
Such people either perish or are incorporated as individuals and small groups into some other culture, whose ideology they adopt for themselves and, above all, for their children.
In some cases, however, the people left with the debris of a shattered culture are able to reintegrate the cultural elements into a new society and a new culture. They are able to do this because they obtain a new nonmaterial culture and thus a new ideology and morale which serve as a cohesive for the scattered elements of past culture they have at hand.
Such a new ideology may be imported or may be indigenous, but in either case it becomes sufficiently integrated with the necessary elements of material culture to form a functioning whole and thus a new society. It is by some such process as this that all new societies, and thus all new civilizations, have been born...
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Originally posted by Poh Ah Pak:
We have said that the culture of a civilization is created in its core area originally and moves outward into peripheral areas which thus become part of the civilization.
This movement of cultural elements is called "diffusion" by students of the subject. It is noteworthy that material elements of a culture, such as tools, weapons, vehicles, and such, diffuse more readily and thus more rapidly than do the nonmaterial elements such as ideas, art forms, religious outlook, or patterns of social behavior.
For this reason the peripheral portions of a civilization (such as Assyria in Mesopotamian Civilization, Rome or Spain in Classical Civilization, and the United States or Australia in Western Civilization) tend to have a somewhat cruder and more material culture than the core area of the same civilization.
Material elements of a culture also diffuse beyond the boundaries of a civilization into other societies, and do so much more readily than the nonmaterial elements of the culture.
For this reason the nonmaterial and spiritual elements of a culture are what give it its distinctive character rather than its tools and weapons which can be so easily exported to entirely different societies.
Thus, the distinctive character of Western Civilization rests on its Christian heritage, its scientific outlook, its humanitarian elements, and its distinctive point of view in regard to the rights of the individual and respect for women rather than in such material things as firearms, tractors, plumbing fixtures, or skyscrapers, all of which are exportable commodities.
The export of material elements in a culture, across its peripheral areas and beyond, to the peoples of totally different societies has strange results.
As elements of material culture move from core to periphery inside a civilization, they tend, in the long run, to strengthen the periphery at the expense of the core because the core is more hampered in the use of material innovations by the strength of past vested interests and because the core devotes a much greater part of its wealth and energy to nonmaterial culture.
Thus, such aspects of the Industrial Revolution as automobiles and radios are European rather than American inventions, but have been developed and utilized to a far greater extent in America because this area was not hampered in their use by surviving elements of feudalism, of church domination, of rigid class distinctions (for example, in education), or by widespread attention to music, poetry, art, or religion such as we find in Europe.
A similar contrast can be seen in Classical Civilization between Greek and Roman or in Mesopotamian Civilization between Sumerian and Assyrian or in Mayan Civilization between Mayan and Aztec.
The diffusion of culture elements beyond the boundaries of one society into the culture of another society presents quite a different case. The boundaries between societies present relatively little hindrance to the diffusion of material elements, and relatively greater hindrance to the diffusion of nonmaterial elements.
Indeed, it is this fact which determines the boundary of the society, for, if the nonmaterial elements also diffused, the new area into which they flowed would be a peripheral portion of the old society rather than a part of a quite different society.
The diffusion of material elements from one society to another has a complex effect on the importing society. In the short run it is usually benefitted by the importation, but in the long run it is frequently disorganized and weakened.
When white men first came to North America, material elements from Western Civilization spread rapidly among the different Indian tribes.
The Plains Indians, for example, were weak and impoverished before 1543, but in that year the horse began to diffuse northward from the Spaniards in Mexico. Within a century the Plains Indians were raised to a much higher standard of living (because of ability to hunt buffalo from horseback) and were immensely strengthened in their ability to resist Americans coming westward across the continent.
In the meantime, the trans-Appalachian Indians who had been very powerful in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries began to receive firearms, steel traps, measles, and eventually whiskey from the French and later the English by way of the St. Lawrence.
These greatly weakened the woods Indians of the trans-Appalachian area and ultimately weakened the Plains Indians of the trans-Mississippi area, because measles and whiskey were devastating and demoralizing and because the use of traps and guns by certain tribes made them dependent on whites for supplies at the same time that they allowed them to put great physical pressure on the more remote tribes which had not yet received guns or traps.
Any united front of reds against whites was impossible, and the Indians were disrupted, demoralized, and destroyed.
In general, importation of an element of material culture from one society to another is helpful to the importing society in the long run only if it is
(a) productive,
(b) can be made within the society itself, and
(c) can be fitted into the nonmaterial culture of the importing society without demoralizing it.
The destructive impact of Western Civilization upon so many other societies rests on its ability to demoralize their ideological and spiritual culture as much as its ability to destroy them in a material sense with firearms.
When one society is destroyed by the impact of another society, the people are left in a debris of cultural elements derived from their own shattered culture as well as from the invading culture.
These elements generally provide the instruments for fulfilling the material needs of these people, but they cannot be organized into a functioning society because of the lack of an ideology and spiritual cohesive.
Such people either perish or are incorporated as individuals and small groups into some other culture, whose ideology they adopt for themselves and, above all, for their children.
In some cases, however, the people left with the debris of a shattered culture are able to reintegrate the cultural elements into a new society and a new culture. They are able to do this because they obtain a new nonmaterial culture and thus a new ideology and morale which serve as a cohesive for the scattered elements of past culture they have at hand.
Such a new ideology may be imported or may be indigenous, but in either case it becomes sufficiently integrated with the necessary elements of material culture to form a functioning whole and thus a new society. It is by some such process as this that all new societies, and thus all new civilizations, have been born...
Next time just give us the link, dun hv to cut and paste so much ya. Thanks, shake head -
i born in taiwan.. who boi song me
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I think more and more china people would be coming to singapore for studies. Recently near my house, they built a hostel. Suddenly got alot of china people area my estate... machiam like a small china. Everywhere i go i see them... market, supermarket, hawker, bus stop, everywhere.
Haiz... school already alot of them, now my estate also alot of them... how? they are everywhere... not that i hate them.. but too much of them makes me lose my identity... its like i am staying in china and not them staying in singapore...
Can we dont have anymore foreign talent??
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Sad at current Singapore situation.
PAP in power, all they care is money.
Really despise them.
Political repression, opposition impotent, no one stand up to their worthless policies.
Sad.
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Originally posted by MaNyZeR:
Can we dont have anymore foreign talent??
Sure...you just swim in your own garbage one month after that.
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Haiz... school already alot of them, now my estate also alot of them... how? they are everywhere... not that i hate them.. but too much of them makes me lose my identity... its like i am staying in china and not them staying in singapore...
The diffusion of material elements from one society to another has a complex effect on the importing society. In the short run it is usually benefitted by the importation, but in the long run it is frequently disorganized and weakened.
The Plains Indians, for example, were weak and impoverished before 1543, but in that year the horse began to diffuse northward from the Spaniards in Mexico. Within a century the Plains Indians were raised to a much higher standard of living (because of ability to hunt buffalo from horseback) and were immensely strengthened in their ability to resist Americans coming westward across the continent.
In the meantime, the trans-Appalachian Indians who had been very powerful in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries began to receive firearms, steel traps, measles, and eventually whiskey from the French and later the English by way of the St. Lawrence.
These greatly weakened the woods Indians of the trans-Appalachian area and ultimately weakened the Plains Indians of the trans-Mississippi area, because measles and whiskey were devastating and demoralizing and because the use of traps and guns by certain tribes made them dependent on whites for supplies at the same time that they allowed them to put great physical pressure on the more remote tribes which had not yet received guns or traps.
Any united front of reds against whites was impossible, and the Indians were disrupted, demoralized, and destroyed.
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Prof Saw, the author of a book entitled Population Of Singapore and a professorial fellow at the Institute of the South-east Asian Studies, thus states emphatically: 'We need foreigners, forever and ever.'
The need to grow Singapore's population is a function of the need to grow the economy, he notes.
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Originally posted by soleachip:
http://www.straitstimes.com/Insight/Story/STIStory_285636.html
I don't think this will help much. No further elaboration on education in the rest of the article.
i can't look at the site you showed me, says i have to log in or something... but since the newspaper didn't state the source, i guess it won't be helpful too.
thanks anyway!
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sometimes I watch movies where they talk about Singapore. Singapore always come across as a place of crime, dishonesty, money laundering, people are generally bad eggs and transient migratory types etc Mostly not in good light... maybe that's prophetic of what might come
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757000 work permit holders???
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It is ok if these foreigners are here strictly as what their workpermit says... ie. students are students, construction workers are constructors.
we do not need more people like admin assitants or coffee shop auntie from china or else where. Since we have singaporeans that is alble to fill the job.
If there are here to fill what we lack, then I am sure Singaporeans wonts be as unhappy with them. We singaporeans are not an unreasonable bunch, infact we are quite docile, if we are unhappy abt something, that means some serious threshold is breached. -
We are reaching 50% treshold soon... so soon... but in army hor, u tink my buddy will be foreigner?
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since you're on the topic of work permits:
Help, jobless foreign workers cryThey turn to MOM even as two MPs plan to raise issue in Parliament
DOZENS of out-of-work foreign workers turned up at the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) yesterday, even as two politicians said they planned to raise in Parliament the question of how these men can enter Singapore with valid work permits but end up with no work.
When The Straits Times visited the MOM branch office in Kim Seng Road yesterday morning, eight workers from a marine firm were queueing to 'lodge a case' against their employer.
They said they had 'run away' from their Tuas dormitory to MOM because they heard that their bosses had planned to send them home to Bangladesh yesterday morning.
'We heard our tickets were ready and that a lorry would come to pick us up at 7am,' said welder Mohd Mohsin Golam, 20, who claimed that he had not worked a single day since arriving here on April 24.
'So we ran away at 6am.'
All of them have been here for between six and eight months and worked, on average, for less than two months.
They also claimed they had paid $8,000 or more to 'agents' for training, a work permit and a guaranteed job.
Most of these agents, The Straits Times understands, are Bangladeshi, but live in Singapore.
'Our group that came in early February had no work, but they still brought in more workers two months later,' said Mr Nahid Rana, 26, who was promised a job as a pipe fitter.
Other groups of workers at the MOM complex yesterday said they were there to get updates on their complaints or to look for jobs. A guard on duty there said that more than 100 such workers turn up at the office daily.
Inside the office, labourer Joynal Abedin stood in front of one counter telling the attending officer that he had worked for only two months and 17 days since arriving here on April 29.
He had been paid for the days he worked, but was hoping he could complain about being denied regular work.
'Can you give us special pass and help us look for another job,' he pleaded, crying.
'If we are sent back, we will be deep in debt,' said the labourer, who was accompanied by Mr Faruk Hossain, 37, who arrived in Singapore on the same flight and claimed he had not worked even a day.
The attending officer replied that he should go to his boss, rather than MOM, to ask for work. 'If you have worked but have not been paid, that is something you can come to us for,' she said, asking him to return later in the afternoon.
He did, and was given a letter asking him to return today with his passport to see an 'employment inspector'.
Both Mr Joynal and Mr Faruk have been drifting around Serangoon Road since leaving their dorm on Tuesday.
'We will not be able to survive if we do not recover the fees we paid,' said Mr Joynal, showing his wallet, which contained only his work permit but no money.
The sole breadwinner in a family of 12, he said he sold his bag and belt shop to pay the agent who had promised him a job in a shipyard which would pay about $900 a month.
The Straits Times could not reach the employers of both sets of workers last evening and is therefore not naming the companies involved.
When asked how workers with work permits could end up without jobs, an MOM spokesman said: 'We are checking with our colleagues for an update. It is unlikely that we can provide you with more details soon as investigations are ongoing.'
Two MPs from the Government Parliamentary Committee on Manpower, meanwhile, have called on the Bangladesh High Commission and MOM to help solve the problem.
Madam Halimah Yacob told The Straits Times that she had tabled a question in Parliament on how it was possible for manpower agencies to bring in foreign workers when they have no proper jobs and what safeguards were in place to prevent the exploitation and abuse of such workers.
'This points to the need for more effective regulation and better control in the issue of work permits by MOM,' said Madam Halimah, adding that the Bangladesh High Commission could help by providing MOM with a list of 'unscrupulous agencies' that have left the workers 'stranded'.
Her colleague from the Manpower GPC, Ms Denise Phua, agreed. The Bangladesh High Commission, she said, should 'also be the first port of call to assist their nationals'. Ms Phua, MP for Jalan Besar GRC, oversees Little India, where many of the workers have been living on the streets.
She added: 'But MOM must take action against the unscrupulous agents based here and hold them responsible for the state of affairs and penalise them accordingly.'
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We need to increase MP allowances.
Soon they will be spending more time addressing foreign worker problems in addition to Singaporeans' problems.
Can they cope?
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Looks like the influx of foreign workers is spiralling out of control and the government is biting off more than what they can chew.
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Take those granted PR and citizenship this year, for example: 77per cent of the new PRs and 62per cent of the new citizens aged 20 and above have post-secondary education. The corresponding figure for existing Singapore citizens is 36per cent. zhun bo?