NUS Pro Bono Group collaborates with the Ministry of Manpower

As part of the NUS Pro Bono Group’s projects, Building of Bridges (BOB) and Law & You (L&Y), two groups of law students collaborated with the Ministry of Manpower Foreign Manpower Management Division (FMMD) to understand the Ministry’s work in managing and protecting migrant workers and foreign domestic workers in Singapore. Both teams carried out focus group discussions and surveys to find out more about the issues of kickbacks amongst migrant workers and moonlighting amongst foreign domestic workers.

Regarding doing work outside of the employee’s work permit, the L&Y team found from conversations with migrant domestic workers that many of them faced pressure from their families back at home to earn more money. Thus, the team recommended educating workers on financial literacy and managing such expectations. Additionally, the team found that employers were often equally involved in making these workers work outside of their allowed scope. Hence, the team felt that more engagement with employers was needed to better understand their role and motivations in this issue. The team recommended stronger punitive measures coupled with a more expansive “soft” approach in creating awareness and meaningfully engaging MDWs in other activities. Further research into the feasibility of legalising and regulating part-time work for the safety of workers was also explored as a possibility in the team’s recommendations.

During their focus group session on kickbacks, the BOB team gave a presentation to educate the participants what purposes employers could not make deductions for, and what was the legal limit to such deductions, accompanied by interactive examples. This session and the post-session survey revealed that the migrant workers were not aware of the technical term “kickbacks” although they understood what this meant after some explanation. Therefore, one of the recommendations proposed by the team was to replace the term “kickbacks” with “improper deductions” in future educational efforts to aid migrant workers’ understanding.

All the findings and recommendations were presented to MOM FMMD and ACE at a final closing session in February 2022, illustrated by the below images.