Food Processing Workers
Food processing workers… offering massages? Although this may seem absurd, this is the reality that our work pass system enables.
Since January 2024, HOME has seen at least 30 cases of workers who had been issued In-Principle Approvals (IPAs) with their occupations listed as food processing workers — but their actual jobs have nothing to do with the food processing industry. Instead, they have been deployed to a range of places ranging from massage parlours, bars, logistics companies doing deliveries, and even traditional chinese medicine (TCM) shops.
All workers paid steep recruitment fees in their home countries in order to secure jobs in Singapore. For a minority, they were deployed to jobs that matched the descriptions of what they were told in their home country; for these workers they were told that the “food processing worker” occupation description in their IPAs were simply “administrative” matters to secure their employment in Singapore. However, for the vast majority of the cases, the workers had been deceived as to the nature of their jobs, with employers exploiting a perforative work pass system to compel workers into work that they never agreed to.
These workers have been misled, financially burdened by high recruitment costs, and placed in highly vulnerable and exploitative conditions, which forced many of them to resign and face the daunting prospect of being sent back home. Some were dismissed by their employer for failing to complete tasks that they never agreed to in the first place.
This article tells the stories of three such “food processing” workers and highlights the gaps in our work pass system that have allowed such exploitation to be proliferated.
Mya
Mya came to Singapore thinking that she would work at a beauty salon for female customers. In Myanmar, Mya had made clear to her agent that she did not want any job that required her to do massages. Her agent had specifically assured her that her job would just be to provide beauty services, and she would not have to provide massages. Mya had also been put in touch with someone who purported to be an agent in Singapore, who sent her videos of the beauty treatments she would be trained to carry out on customers. Satisfied, Mya agreed to the job and looked forward to coming to Singapore to work.
After struggling to, but eventually raising, the $4,700 dollars she needed to pay in agent fees to secure the job, Mya landed in Singapore in July 2025. The day before she landed, she received her IPA, which she, however, could not understand, for it was entirely in English. Only much later would she find out that the occupation stated on the IPA was “food processing worker”.
After she was picked up at the airport, she was sent for a medical check-up and then dropped off at the premises of a massage parlour, where she spent the night. At this point, Mya was dismayed to learn that she was going to be working at a massage parlour after all, despite her clear objections. However, Mya felt that there was nothing she could do, given the recruitment fees she had paid, and given that she had just arrived and had not started earning any wages.
The next day, her female boss started her training, and gave her pointers on how to conduct upper-back oil massages. Mya had no prior training or experience in massages. She was asked to attend to her first customer (a middle-aged man), later that day.
Initially, both she and her boss carried out a lower-body massage for the middle-aged male client while the client spoke to her boss in Mandarin (which Mya did not understand). After approximately 10 minutes, her boss suddenly left the room, leaving Mya alone with the client, who then gestured for a hand job. Shocked and distressed, Mya declined, to which the client responded by touching Mya’s chest.
Mya stopped the massage and left the shop to seek shelter with a friend. Mya then lodged a police report and came to HOME for assistance. It was while she was seeking advice with us that she realised that her IPA stated that her occupation was listed as “food processing worker”.
Mya filed complaints with MOM to investigate her employer for deceptive recruitment practices, as well as the police for the sexual assault that the faced. HOME liaised with the authorities to allow her work while investigations are ongoing. Currently, she has found alternative employment and is awaiting the conclusion of her case.
Karen
In April 2025, an agent in Myanmar told Karen about a job in Singapore at a “Chinese medicine clinic.” In Myanmar, she had seen small clinics offering Chinese herbal remedies, so she assumed the job would involve serving food and drinks in a simple, service-related role. She was promised $2000 a month for this job. She secured the job and paid $5900 in recruitment fees. She also paid for her airfare into Singapore.
She was made to sign a contract just two days before her departure to Singapore. The document was entirely in Chinese, a language she could not read. No effort was made by her agent in Myanmar, to explain the terms to her, and she was not given a translated copy. As Karen really wanted the job, she signed the contract.
When Karen arrived, she was brought straight to a location in Chinatown. Much to her surprise, she was asked to start promoting massage services to potential customers. She was made to stand outside the shop for hours, holding a sign and trying to call in customers. The work left her feeling physically drained and was vastly different from what she imagined her job to be.
At first, she thought this might just be temporary. But soon, her supervisors told her that she would eventually be taught how to perform massage services herself. It was only then that she began to understand the kind of work she had been recruited for and how far it was from the service job she believed she had signed up for.
After working for three days at the massage parlour, Karen told her employer that this was not the job she had signed up for. Instead of addressing her concerns, the agent eventually informed her that the employer no longer wanted her, and she was fired.
Karen then approached HOME for assistance.
When HOME checked the ACRA business profile of the company that employed Karen, we found that its primary business activity was listed as “massage parlours and foot reflexology”, not Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).
HOME helped Karen raise concerns with MOM about her unpaid salary for three days of work, a request for a refund of agency fees, and the deception over her job description in both the IPA and contract. Even though the non-payment of Karen’s salary would have likely allowed her to change employers at TADM, Karen felt compelled to accept a settlement of $30 for the three days’ work , and also receivedpartial refunds of her agency fees and airfare. MOM also told her that while investigations against her employer will continue, she was not required. Eventually, she returned home to Myanmar.
Lily
While she was in Myanmar, Lily interviewed for a waitressing role at a pub with an agent in Singapore. She was told that she would be paid on a commission basis and she could earn $3,000 to $4,000 per month if she performed well. She was eventually accepted for the job and paid $4,800 in agency fees to her agent in Myanmar to secure the position.
Lily received her IPA in July 2025. She used Google Translate to review the IPA, and
focused on the salary amount, which was $2000. She did not understand the translation of "Food Processing Worker" listed as her occupation and genuinely believed that she would be working as a waitress.
Lily arrived expecting to serve food and drinks. When she reported to work on her first day, her supervisor informed her that her duties would go beyond merely waitressing, and that she was expected to “entertain” customers as well. This included touching and kissing them. Her supervisor then proceeded to demonstrate to her how to entertain patrons, using a customer at the bar for this purpose. All of a sudden, she then pushed Lily towards the customer, who wrapped his arms around her shoulders.
Shaken, Lily pried herself from the customer.
She did not return to work after the end of her shift that day, and later came to HOME, where we helped her lodge a police complaint against the customer who touched her without consent and a case to MOM for deceptive recruitment practices.
Lily was hopeful that her employer and agent would be taken to task and that she could continue to work in Singapore while investigations were ongoing. However, last week, Lily was told by MOM that she had to go home as her claims were “resolved”: her police case had concluded (it was unclear whether any action was being taken against the person who committed assault), and she had received a 50% refund of her agency fees. Even though MOM said they will continue to investigate the agent and employer, Lily was no longer required for investigations and was to be repatriated. Lily was devastated: she was being forced to go home even though she was a victim of deception, and she desperately wanted to remain in Singapore.
Lily’s case highlights a clear injustice: a worker who had been deceived about her job and forced to leave an untenable work situation is unable to achieve the redress she wanted, which was to seek alternative employment. Instead, she is forced to return home, where she will have to pay additional sums to return to Singapore (or seek employment elsewhere).
The issues
A perforative work pass system
It is highly worrying that MOM’s work pass system had been granting IPAs for food processing workers for businesses that have nothing to do with the food processing industry. When HOME did an ACRA search into some of the companies that hired the workers who sought up, their businesses were described as “massage parlours and foot reflexology” (as in Karen’s case).
ACRA business profile of Karen’s company
Some workers were also unaware that their occupations on the IPAs are listed as food processing workers. Migrant workers rely on IPAs to make sense of the jobs they are signing up for — it is an official document issued by the Ministry of Manpower which sets out their basic salary, allowances, rate of overtime pay, and rate of basic pay. It also includes the names of their employer that they are legally allowed to work for, and identifies the agents that processed their applications. In the event of workplace disputes, the IPA serves as a key piece of evidence that sets out workers’ entitlements. It is therefore essential that IPAs provide accurate information regarding the nature of the work employees will be performing. Allowing employers to input details unrelated to the actual tasks at hand renders the IPA ineffective and irrelevant.
It is also deeply concerning that IPAs for Burmese workers are issued solely in English, rendering them unable to comprehend a critical document outlining their fundamental terms of employment.
Circumvention of source country restrictions
Companies may only hire work permit holders from a specific list of countries (known as source countries). For different sectors, different source country restrictions apply.
Exceptions are made for specific occupations stipulated by MOM. For these specified occupations, companies can hire work permit holders from a wider list of countries — countries referred to as “Non-Traditional Sources”. Countries on this list include India, Bangladesh, the Philippines and Myanmar.
Food processing workers are on the NTS occupation list. This enables companies to hire such workers from more countries, even if they are otherwise limited by source country restrictions.
Employers in the services industry, who run spas, restaurants and massage parlours (i.e. the businesses that we see employing food processing workers) are not allowed to hire workers from NTS countries. However, it seems that employers circumvented this restriction by applying for IPAs for food processing workers, hiring them from NTS countries like Myanmar, and deploying them in roles that have nothing to do with food processing.
Vulnerability to forced labour and trafficking
This system also exposes workers to potential forced labour and trafficking situations, particularly those who have been compelled to perform sexual services.
After workers realise that they have been deceived about the nature of the job, many workers might have little choice but to do the work being offered to them in Singapore, whatever the pay is, even if the job description and the salary do not match what they were told back home. Due to the high recruitment fees they have already paid (and some having borrowed money with high interest rates), they fear unemployment and being sent home in debt. Thus, they continue to work for their current employers, continuing to be exposed to vulnerabilities and coerced into doing work that they do not want to do.
Singapore is a signatory to the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Forced Labour Convention No.29 in 1965. It defines forced labour as “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily”. Menace of penalty can take various forms: from criminal sanctions to multiple forms of coercion such as “threats, violence, the retention of identity documents, confinement, or nonpayment of wages”. The concept of ‘voluntariness’, refers to a worker’s consent to both enter an employment relationship and his/her freedom to exit it at any time. A person is therefore considered to be in a situation of forced labour ‘if they enter work or service against their freedom of choice, and cannot leave it without penalty or threat of penalty’.
The ILO has also identified 11 key indicators of forced labour, many of which are fulfilled by the circumstances of the food processing workers:
Abuse of vulnerability: All workers had paid high recruitment fees in their home countries to secure jobs in Singapore, amounting to thousands of dollars. All but two of the food processing workers who approached HOME for help were from Myanmar. It is evident that unscrupulous agents and employers are exploiting the vulnerabilities faced by Burmese workers. The current political instability and humanitarian crisis in Myanmar have caused many of them to be desperate to seek employment elsewhere. These workers have a difficult choice to make: remain and work a job they did not sign up for, and do not want, for uncertain pay, or return home, where piles of debt, insecure conditions and a lack of economic opportunity awaits them.
Additionally, finding a different job in Singapore is often not an option — work permit holders are not allowed to transfer jobs without the approval of their employers, who have little reason to grant them transfers; and returning home is not ideal either, given the huge agent fees they paid to secure their jobs in Singapore, which leaves them deeply indebted. Thus, they are compelled to keep working and giving in to their employers’ demands, no matter how unreasonable;
Deception: many of the workers were promised jobs that were entirely different from what they eventually ended up, or had to end up doing;
Physical and sexual violence: some of the workers were sexually violated by customers: they were touched against their will in massage parlours that they ended up working at;
Intimidation and threats: The IPAs of food processing workers state that they are only allowed to be hired as food processing workers for their listed employer. In other words, FPWs who are made to do other jobs may run the risk of being investigated and sanctioned for working illegally. This fear of prosecution further deters them from filing complaints;
Abusive working and living conditions: Workers were made to perform tasks against their will, including the provision of sexual services, and work excessively long hours.
Additionally, the circumstances of these workers fit the international description of trafficking: they are (1) recruited through (3) deceptive means for the purposes of (3) exploitation.
Image taken from HOME’s 2019 report, Behind Closed Doors: Forced Labour in the Domestic Work Sector.
Developments
After raising HOME’s concerns to the Ministry of Manpower, we have seen some changes to policy. From 1 September 2025, the Ministry of Manpower has mandated that all companies applying to hire food processing workers are required to have a food process establishment or slaughterhouse license.
Screenshot from MOM’s list of non-traditional source workers
While we welcome this move, it remains appalling that this gaping gap in the work permit system was allowed in the first place. For every food processing worker that has sought help from HOME, there could be dozens more that faced (or are still facing) exploitation at the hands of unscrupulous employers, deployed to industries that are diametrically different from the food processing industry.
Workers who entered Singapore on a food processing IPA before 1 September are currently having trouble with Work Permit issuance. Agents are making use of their vulnerability to ask them to do sex work, illegally.
Screenshot of agent asking worker (whose food processing work permit is unable to be issued) to do “black massage”
Recommendations
HOME recommends that the following measures be undertaken:
Stringent enforcement against IPA misclassification.
Before an IPA is issued, there has to be stringent scrutiny to ensure congruence with occupations listed in IPAs and the businesses applying for them. The work pass system should flag applications where there is a clear mismatch between the occupation applied for, and the nature of the business making the application.
Protections for deceived workers
Workers who have been hired deceptively as food processing workers should be allowed to find new employment. Workers should not be summarily repatriated by the employers who have deceived them about the nature of their jobs, nor should they be repatriated at the end of investigations. Where occupations described on IPAs differ from the work they are eventually made to do, victims should not be repatriated contrary to their wishes.
Ensure that all IPAs are translated to the workers’ native language
Currently, IPAs for some nationalities in the non-domestic sectors, such as services, are not in their native languages. This includes IPAs for Burmese and Indonesian workers. All IPAs for work permit holders should be translated into their native languages to ensure clarity of job scope and salaries.