The Star online - 4 January 2013. SINGAPORE will find it difficult to recruit foreign construction workers even from newer markets like Sri Lanka and the Philippines if it does not match salaries that employers elsewhere are offering. This is the view of agents, employers and migrant rights activists who were reacting to the news that Singapore employers are stepping up recruitment of workers from these two countries to cope with the construction boom here.
Republica - 4 January 2013. Over the years, the Nepal government has had the minimum pay for Nepali overseas workers in three countries- Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait -raised. The minimum salary for workers employed in Qatar was already specified by the government a couple of years back.
Colombo Page - 3 January 2013. Remittances from Sri Lankan migrant workers are estimated to exceed US$ 6 billion in 2012, the Central Bank predicted. Last year's remittances increased 16.8 percent to an estimated US$ 6.007 billion from US$ 5.15 billion in 2011. The workers' remittances are 10 percent of the country's GDP in 2012.
Daily Mirror - 3 January 2012. Sri Lanka announced yesterday its plans to reduce the deployment of housemaids in the Middle East, including in the Kingdom. The Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE), which is the statutory body set up to look after the welfare of the country’s overseas workers, aims to reduce women migrating overseas to work as domestic aides by 80 to 90 percent by 2020.
Times of India - 3 January 2012. The health department will soon start cracking the whip on industrial units in various industrial estates if migrants labourers are found without health cards.The employers will be slapped with a fine under the Goa Public Health Act, if migrant labourers employed by them do not have health cards.
Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2) - 2 January 2013. An account of an Indian migrant workers' experience negotiating work regulations in Singapore.
Channel News Asia - 2 January 2013. Maids in Singapore can expect more support and a wider range of training in 2013. The activities are being rolled out in tandem with policy changes that require foreign domestic workers to be given a mandatory weekly day off from 1 January 2013.
Phuket News - 2 January 2013. Four people smugglers were sentenced to up to 10 years in prison by a Thai court after 54 illegal workers from Myanmar suffocated to death inside a seafood container, an official said on December 28.
Jakarta Globe - 2 January 2013. The Indonesian government is mounting an ambitious land-bridge operation to rescue hundreds of Indonesian migrant workers from war-torn Syria.
Inquirer News - 1 January 2013. Malaysia has resumed recruiting Bangladeshi migrant workers after a four-year pause, an official said Tuesday, in a move easing Dhaka’s remittance worries after the jobs market in the Middle East dried up.
Jakarta Globe - 29 December 2012. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported a 51 percent drop in legal cases against Indonesian migrant workers this year on the back of new preventative measures that aim to better prepare workers for a life abroad, Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said.
The Nation - 27 December 2012. Migrant workers from Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar who have failed to get their nationality verified will be granted another three months to apply for a work permit, the Labour Ministry said yesterday.
The Nation - 24 December 2012. The fate of Myanmar migrant workers in Thailand is hanging in the balance as labour ministers of the two countries fail to reach common ground over the extension of nationality verification.
Asiaone News - 22 December 2012. Indonesian migrant workers will always be vulnerable unless the government imposes strict policies to protect them throughout the whole process - from recruitment until their return from overseas employment.
The Diplomat - 25 December 2012. Nepalese citizens are increasingly moving abroad -- particularly to Gulf countries -- to find work. Will their rights be protected?
