Foreign workers don’t have it so good in Singapore.
On 30 March 2010, the body of Chelladurai Lenin, 42, was dumped along Upper Changi Road after he had died from head injuries – a fractured skull and internal bleeding in the head after falling from a construction site, wrote The Straits Times (ST).
His employer, furniture repair business owner Tay Kok Eng, 56, was charged on Thursday with dumping the body, as well as illegally hiring Lenin at his company, Midas Maintenance and Services, the paper said.
The news report stated that Lenin, who was from Chennai and had a wife and three children, died after refusing medical treatment as he would have been deported for being an illegal worker.
Tay faces a maximum of six months in jail and a S$2,000 fine for illegally dumping of a corpse, as well as another six months to two years of jail and another S$6,000 fine for hiring an illegal worker.
The foreign worker demand in Singapore is continually rising, especially in the construction sector, with the Housing Development Board (HDB) slated to release another 25,000 more BTO flats this year.
In a parliamentary report, Minister of National Development, Khaw Boon Wan, said that HDB needed about 18,000 construction workers for its building programme last year.
This is expected to increase to about 30,000 to meet this year’s building programme. As each building programme will take three to five years to complete, the cumulative requirement of construction workers could rise to 45,000 within the next few years.