Re: pap government department abetted kidnap and obstruction of justice
- From: "Goon Ga Zai" <Goon@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2008 12:38:13 +0800
Yes ! You are the fake Lobert, monkeyxinxin aka fake AleXX, the ApeXinXin.
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http://www.yawningbread.org/Liar truth, you must be an idiot. Chinese Embassy is supposed to care for
Yawning Bread. 5 December 2008
Muddy Singapore swallows China workers
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wanting to press for a resolution of his dispute with his employer,
Xue Hanming, a construction worker originally from Jiangsu, China, called
the Ministry of Manpower on 3 December 2008. "Ms Foo [Kim Hui] told me to
go down to the ministry the next day," he told me.
On the 4th, he arrived and asked the reception clerk to inform Ms
Foo
of his presence. He was asked to sit in the waiting area.
After a long while with no sign of Foo, Xue began to wonder if
something else was up. Fresh in his mind was the case of a fellow worker,
Xue Chengming (no relation), who had been seized by security agents hired
by their employer on 2 Dec. More on Xue Chengming's seizure below.
Fearing a similar fate, Xue decided to leave. Moments after stepping
out, he saw his manager and a couple of security guards enter the
Manpower
ministry building. It was a near miss.
The coincidences scream at you. Who would have alerted the employer
that Xue Hanming was in the ministry building? Why did Foo never come
down
to meet someone with whom she herself had asked to come to the ministry,
giving the impression that she was prepared to discuss the matter with
the
complainant? Are government offices meant to be places for resolving
problems in good faith and according to the law, or locations for
entrapment?
But let's start from the beginning.
* * * * *
The two Xue were members of a larger group of workers -- a figure of
32 was mentioned at some point in the interview -- who were in dispute
with their employer, Xuyi Building Engineering Co, a "foreign company
registered in Singapore" according to the records at the Accounting and
Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA). Its registration number is F
065765
K.
Xuyi is a subcontractor at both the Marina Bay and Sentosa casino
projects. I am told that Xuyi is a subcontractor for multinational
construction company Ssangyong at these sites.
This was not the first time that Xuyi faced unhappy workers. There
was at least one earlier batch who had lodged complaints against the
company -- a fact that the Ministry of Manpower acknowledged to Xue and
his colleagues. More on that batch's story in the box at right.
Xue Hanming spoke on behalf of five other men, whose names are in
the
photo caption below. Two of them had been seized by the employer's
security agents before the interview and handed over to the Immigration
and Checkpoints Authority (ICA).
Of these six men, three had been brought to Singapore in late 2007,
one in February 2008 and two, including Xue Hanming, in June 2008.
Before coming here, they had signed employment contracts with a
labour agency in China -- whom they later discovered was set up by the
spouse of the boss of Singapore Xuyi -- which contained a paragraph on
expected remuneration. It is not an altogether clear clause, but it may
be
common in China. Essentially, it says that the monthly salary will be in
the range of "S$1,250 to S$1,500 (subject to satisfactory diligence)". It
also specified that if they worked every day of a month, they would get
an
extra S$1 per day, i.e. S$30 for a 30-day month.
The clause in their employment contract
By end October, Xue Hanming and others were seriously unhappy about
not receiving their wages, formally lodging their complaints with their
company's management. Xue himself, following the company's procedure,
signed a form recording his grievance.
They even had difficulty at that stage. Xue wanted the complaint
form
to say that he wanted three months of salary arrears to be paid, but the
supervisor or manager insisted on rewriting it to say "Salary too little,
not in keeping with contract obligation". As you can imagine, the rewrite
would conceal the fact that the company had broken Singapore law by not
paying its workers on time; the rewrite cast5 it as a dispute about
interpretation of contractual terms.
In response, the company produced a schedule listing what the men
were owed. In Xue's case, the schedule showed that his gross salary in
June and July was over S$1,400 monthly, but for August, September and
October, his gross decreased to S$1,300 and S$1,200.
It was similar for the others in the batch.
Xue asked his management: "Is the gross salary for the last three
months lowered because I filed a complaint and indicated I wanted to go
back?"
He was not given much of an answer. "It's like that," was what the
company representative told him.
Xue was prepared to accept the slightly reduced amounts, but then
the
company produced a list of deductions that whittled the gross salaries of
August, September and October down to a nett S$1,400 or so. For all three
months.
Others had it worse,
"In my case," said Liu Xiaoping, "my nett after deductions was just
about S$500 for those three months!" As was the case for Chen Yuguang --
one of two guys currently in ICA detention.
The Zaobao article (undated) they saw (and photocopied)
Now feeling cheated and quite irate, they also chanced upon a story
in the Chinese-language newspaper Lianhe Zaobao which told of another
company being found in the wrong for holding back salaries time-wise and
through deductions. They further learnt that it was illegal for companies
not to pay overtime for working hours in excess of 44 hours a week.
In their case, they had been working every day, seven days a week.
They often worked more than 80 hours a week. This only fueled their
anger.
Ministry of Manpower - first meeting
On 6 November 2008, they filed a complaint with the Ministry of
Manpower, meeting the above-mentioned Ms Foo and an officer whose surname
in hanyu pinyin was Chen.
Xue recounted that Chen waxed lyrical with three allegorical tales.
"His first story was from Lu Xun, about a patriot and revolutionary
named Ah Q, who ended up being executed, because he was illiterate. He
signed a confession without understanding it.
"I told him in response, 'The era of Ah Q is over'." Refusing to be
compared to an illiterate, Xue pointed to the Zaobao article that had
informed him of his rights. The article had said that it is illegal for
an
employer to make deductions from workers' pay. Even if an agreement had
been signed, the agreement would not be valid, Xue summarised the news
story.
Chen then spoke of the Yellow River, saying that at its source the
water is clear, but in the lower reaches, it is yellow and muddy.
"Frankly," noted Xue, "I don't understand what he was trying to say. Was
he saying that Singapore is muddy?"
The Manpower official then launched into his third allegory. "Rub
two
stones and you get a spark," Xue recalled Chen saying. "But if you have
an
egg and a stone.... You workers are the eggs."
"He said this in front of more than 20 workers as well as company
representative Tang Xuan," reported Xue. "And the meeting ended like that
with no conclusion."
Along the way, the workers learnt that the same company had had a
similar case just weeks before. Twelve workers, originally from Henan,
had
meetings with the Manpower ministry in October and were eventually sent
home to China in early November. Workers in that batch were upset about
the same things, and demanded to be released from their contracts and
repatriated. To close that case, the company deducted S$100 for each
month
in the contract not worked. There were also deductions for rent and
utilities.
The current batch said that if the company would use the same
formula, they would accept the settlement. But this time, the company
refused, while the ministry officials said, "We can't tell your employer
what to pay you."
Ministry of Manpower - second and third meetings
The mediation session of 19 November was likewise fruitless. The
employer stood firm, saying something to this effect: These projects (the
casinos) are important projects, and if we let you quit whenever you
want,
we cannot complete them in time.
The third meeting was not held at the ministry, but at the worksite.
Inside information told Yawning Bread that the ministry was seeing more
and more workers showing up and making complaints, and they did not want
the public to see how many unhappy workers were descending on their
premises.
Held on 26 November, the officer Chen circumlocuted again. He spoke
of a wolf, goat and grass wanting a boatman's services to cross a river.
The problem was that if the boatman did so, with the three of them ending
up on the same bank, they would devour each other. According to Xue, the
ministry saw itself as the boatman. The wolf represented what he called
third parties, (which could be the NGOs and outsiders getting involved),
the goat the company, and the workers the lowly grass.
Soon after making this nebulous comparison, Chen told the company's
representative, Tang Xuan, something to this effect: "Go and settle this
properly. I have to go now because I have an exam to take tomorrow."
And with that, the meeting broke up.
Facing total intransigence on the employer's part, the workers
thought about hiring a lawyer, but they had no money. Eventually they
turned to an NGO, TWC2 (Transient Workers Count Too), who are now trying
to help them though they too have very limited influence and resources.
Snatching and robbing
Along the way, some of the workers in the group gave up and accepted
the company's unfair and miserly terms, and were repatriated -- or at
least that was the impression that Yawning Bread got. Six held on. But
for
these six, things got nastier.
Tuesday, 2 December: Four or five security agents hired by the
employer, and led by the company representative Tang Xuan, went to Xue
Chengming's dormitory between 10 and 11 in the morning and took him away
under coercion. One co-worker witnessed it and informed Xue Hanming.
Shortly after, agents from another security company took Chen Yuguang
away
from his dormitory, which was at a different location. To Yawning Bread,
the two instances sound awfully like kidnapping.
Friends tried to call Xue Chengming on his two mobile phone numbers,
but these were switched off. Nor could friends reach Chen Yuguang.
In the latter's case, the security agency which snatched him was
identified as a company with a name like "UTR". It was traced, and TWC2
rang them to enquire if Chen was there. It was established that he was.
Yang Zhiqiang, Xue Hanming, Sha Najak from TWC2, together with Stephanie
Chok --
a Singaporean who helps workers in her personal capacity -- went there
and
had a chance to speak with him.
Chen told them that his handphone had been taken from him by the
security agents. One could assume that Xue Chengming too had been
relieved
of his two phones by the security agents who seized him.
Yawning Bread asked the men at the interview: Who owned the phones?
They said the men did. They were the personal property of Xue and Chen.
Well, dear readers, doesn't that amount to robbery? And wouldn't keeping
people incommunicado reinforce the justification for calling this kidnap?
Wednesday, 3 December: Around midnight Tuesday/Wednesday, police
arrived at UTR -- almost surely a result of a phone call from the
employer
Xuyi to the police -- and took Chen Yuguang to Central Police Station.
When Stephanie went there Wednesday afternoon, she also enquired
with
the police about Xue Chengming. She told them that no one had been able
to
contact him since the day before and people needed to know his
whereabouts
and if he was safe. After some pleading, the police checked their
database
and found him as being in custody at Bedok Police Station. His status was
that he had been "arrested" for overstaying.
Were they overstayers? This could not be so, because Xue Chengming,
for one, had a letter from the Ministry of Manpower setting an
appointment
date of 4 December, and it was only 2 or 3 December when the police took
him in.
The way things are supposed to work in Singapore is that when
employees are in a dispute with en employer, the Ministry of Manpower
issues them with special passes so that they can remain in Singapore
until
the issues have been resolved. Having a letter from the Ministry of
Manpower setting up an appointment is a good sign that these people had
been put on special passes.
Moreover, a certain Nigel, an officer with the Ministry of Manpower,
would later confirm to TWC2 that these men had been issued with special
passes, but he also said that these passes were handed over to the
employer at the time of issuance. However, Nigel added that the "passes
had expired because the employer neglected to renew them" according to an
email Stephanie received from TWC2.
This does not make any sense, so the above information may be wrong.
How can Manpower entrust the special passes to the employer when the
employer and workers are locked in a dispute? How can the employer have
the discretion to "renew" or not, the special passes, when the employer
would have an interest in throwing the workers out of the country?
Whatever it is, it's quite evident that the men are not
overstayers --
and based on usual procedure, they would not be -- but the police seemed
to think he was. It is believed that like Chen Yuguang's case, Xuyi
called
the police after their security agents had seized Xue Chengming, with
Xuyi
telling the police that Xue was an overstayer. The police appeared to be
uninterested in checking their information. Effectively, therefore, the
police were holding people unlawfully.
Thursday, 4 December: Xue Hanming had his near miss with security
agents in the lobby of the Ministry of Manpower, as described at the
start
of this story.
Police said, "Don't come."
That (Thursday) afternoon at 15:08h, Xue Hanming got a phone call
from a police officer named Ye, who told him that his employer had made a
police report that he (Xue Hanming) had gone missing. The employer must
have called the police right after they failed to nab him at the ministry
lobby.
"I am not missing," Xue replied. "Shall I come to the police
station?
I would be happy to do that, so that you can protect me from my employer.
"Mr Ye then said, 'No, no. Don't come'," Xue recalled with a laugh.
The police officer then suggested that Xue seek help from the
Chinese
embassy. Xue said he had tried that but the embassy told him it was a
domestic Singapore matter.
Fly yourself home or be caned
Halfway through Yawning Bread's interview, Xue Hanming received a
call from Chen Yuguang on his handphone. Chen and Xue Chengming had by
then been dumped by the police onto the Immigration and Checkpoints
Authority (ICA). Chen was calling from an ICA landline (his cellphone
having been seized). He was under pressure from the ICA to find the money
to buy his air ticket home, and was appealing to his friends for help.
Why was Chen Yuguang and Xue Chengming looking to buy their own air
tickets home? you should ask. After all, the rule is that employers are
responsible for paying for that. All workers in Singapore know that.
My guess is that the ICA were threatening them with imprisonment and
caning -- these being the penalties for illegal overstaying -- and
pressuring him to accept an injustice.
* * * * *
This story started with an abusive employer, but what got me
interested was the role played by the government departments. From this,
you can see that they were not at all interested in helping workers.
Mediation became story-telling in the hope of discouraging the workers
from pressing their claims. No mention is made of the company being
prosecuted for violating our Employment Act.
The police held people for overstaying without a shred of evidence
that they were overstayers.
The ICA held people in an armlock, getting them to fund their own
flight home, with or without being paid their wages.
They all just want to get rid of the problem with no regard for
justice, law or rights. The source of the problem is the employer, but by
action or inaction, our government is abetting all these abuses, ranging
from cheating people of their wages, to robbery of their handphones, to
kidnap.
It's not just bad officers. It is the system. There are many things
wrong with the foreign worker work permit system, as illustrated by this
case, which I will point out in a follow-up article.
But meanwhile, I hope you feel as angry as I do.
© Yawning Bread
their nationals
in Singapore.
I am Lobert xinxin the monkey.
.
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