In response to MOM’s “Migrant Worker Experience Survey 2024”
MOM’s recent publication “Migrant Worker Experience and Employer Survey 2024” suggests that migrant workers live virtually problem-free lives in Singapore, with over 95% of migrant workers surveyed stating that they are “satisfied” with living and working in Singapore.
MOM’s survey at a glance. Source: Ministry of Manpower
There has been understandable scepticism over the findings. As an organisation that engages daily with migrant workers to assist with their well-being issues, we find the report’s findings surprisingly optimistic — raising questions about its credibility.
Lack of research rigour
In HOME’s view, the study does not fulfill basic research standards. Scant details were given about the study methodology, including how workers were recruited and how anonymity was assured. No demographic details about the participants’ were provided, such as gender, nationality, occupation, sector, length of stay in Singapore or type of accommodation. The experiences of migrant workers differ significantly across these factors, and these omissions affect the validity and reliability of the findings.
The survey dwells on subjective concepts such as “satisfaction”, “preference”, “high salary”, and “safe” (without defining them), while omitting critical questions about migrant workers’ objective working conditions, such as information about work hours, how much they are paid, their experiences of wage theft (including deductions and kickbacks), and recruitment fees. The findings therefore fail to shed light on many important issues migrant workers face.
It is also not clear if the participants were allowed to give open-ended answers to the survey questions (which would provide a more authentic snapshot into their lived experiences) or if their responses were limited only to the options provided in the report. For Chart 3, for example, no explanation was for why these reasons were given for workers to choose from.
Taken from MOM’s Migrant Worker Experience Survey 2024.
Responses to findings
HOME saw around 1195 workers at our migrant worker help desk in 2024. This is almost double the 647 workers our help desk supported in 2018 (when the survey was last conducted). Based on HOME’s casework data, the following are prevalent problems faced by workers in non-domestic sectors such as construction, marine, and service:
Wage Theft: This includes non-payment and underpayment of salaries, including legal entitlements such as overtime, rest day or holiday pay; unlawful deductions; kickbacks.
Employment issues: lack of itemised payslips, deception in working conditions (including scope of work), illegal deployment, unjust dismissal and excessive overtime.
Recruitment fees: Recruitment fees can be as high as $12,000 to $15,000. Many migrant workers comply with highly exploitative work conditions due to their indebtedness.
Work Injury issues: Workers have issues navigating the WICA system, including not receiving updates on their cases. Employers may also not report instances of workplace accidents. Many workers also do not receive their medical leave wages while their cases are being processed, which makes it difficult to sustain themselves during the WICA process.
Failure to provide upkeep: Employers regularly fail to provide food and accommodation to workers who undergo salary and WICA cases.
Low salaries: Workers have IPAs recording very low basic salaries, such as $500 a month.
Access to justice: HOME assists many workers who have encountered difficulty navigating the ECT and WICA systems, or have encountered unscrupulous actors who seek to block their attempts to receive redress and compensation.
It is surprising that the report makes no reference to these issues. Rather, questions posed were superficial and seem almost designed to avoid any kind of close analysis of workers’ well-being issues altogether.
We set out our specific responses to findings in the report:
Confiscation of passports
It was concerning that almost a third of the migrant workers had their passports held by their employer, a direct contravention of the Passports Act, and a key indicator of forced labour / trafficking indicators. This is a serious breach, for a significant proportion of workers, that deserves serious attention. That the percentage has fallen since 2018 is not cause for celebration; that passports are returned “upon request” is besides the point.
IPA
The questions asked about IPAs are not meaningful to capture workers’ salary and work experiences.
While the findings state that 91.7% of workers surveyed received the salaries that are stated in their IPAs, this may mean that basic salaries are paid according to the IPA. But this data does not take into account wage manipulation such as non-payment of overtime pay, kickbacks, or when low basic salaries are recorded, but allowances are inflated.
The survey questions also did not capture whether IPAs were translated into their native languages (in HOME experience, workers from Myanmar, excluding domestic workers, receive their IPAs only in English). Nor was anything asked about whether the information in their IPAs accurately reflect their actual working conditions and salaries. To say that workers received their IPAs means nothing; workers can still be deceived and exploited by being made to work in jobs that are not within the scope of their IPA occupations, or they could be paid salaries lower than that stated in their IPAs.
Perception of employers and MOM
The high numbers of workers indicating that they will approach employers for work injury (99.5%) is meaningless. In many instances, workers have no choice but to do so. Given that work injuries occur at worksites, there is no one else around who can offer them assistance.
It is also unclear how this finding, as well as the one that 89.3% of participants found it easy to approach MOM for employment-related matters, translates into “high trust” in employers and MOM.
Future plans of migrant workers
While 80.2% of workers said they will choose to continue working with their current employers, this ignores their high recruitment fees, and this indebtedness is a crucial contextual feature through which we need to scrutinise this response. Changing jobs, or leaving to work in another country will incur more fees and debt (through agent fees, or kickbacks), a situation that migrant workers will strenuously wish to avoid.
Job precarity
One finding that does align with what HOME has seen is the job precarity experienced by migrant workers: 44.1%—less than half of respondents—said their jobs were stable. Migrant workers on work permits are highly dependent on employers for continued employment, and face the constant risk of termination and repatriation at their employer’s whim.
That employers find it difficult to find workers with the right skills (only 27.3% said they could do so) is also indicative of a system that easily allows for workers to be repatriated, with little regard for their skills and experience. Once workers are sent back, it is cumbersome and expensive for them to return to Singapore. A system that allows migrant workers to change jobs freely, with clear notice periods, will benefit employers and workers alike.
Future reports should more accurately reflect migrant workers’ experiences
We hope that MOM’s future surveys can provide a more critical analysis of the lived experiences of migrant workers. Conducting studies on any group of people requires content knowledge of the target population to identify relevant research questions, and the operationalization of key concepts; it should also allow for critical discussion of the findings, based on empirical evidence that is reliable. While we encourage the interest MOM has shown in learning more about the living and working conditions of migrant workers, the study it commissioned could have been more rigorous; this should have been achievable, given the amount of resources it has compared to independent think tanks and NGOs.