RESPONSIBILITY FOR FOREIGN WORKERS

Dr Teo Ho Pin asked the Minister for Labour whether his Ministry will consider making sub-contractors solely responsible for the foreign workers whom they employ instead of the current practice of making main contractors jointly responsible for these foreign workers who are beyond the control of the main contractors.

Dr Lee Boon Yang: Work Permits are issued to subcontractors on the support of main contractors for their projects. The main contractors are thus partially responsible for the foreign workers brought in by their subcontractors to work on their projects. However, in the past, some main contractors had not exercised vigilance in the support of their subcontractors' work permit applications. Their careless endorsement of the subcontractors' work permit applications allowed some unscrupulous subcontractors to either inflate their foreign worker needs, or submit applications using false contracts. As a result, they operate as labour suppliers and bring in foreign workers, receive commission, default on levy payments and even abandon the workers, resulting in a host of social problems.

To stem this abuse, the Ministry had decided in December 1997 to refer subcontractors' work permit applications to main contractors for verification and hold main contractors jointly responsible for any workers abandoned by their subcontractors. This encouraged main contractors to scrutinise their subcontractors' work permit applications. It also emphasised the important role of main contractors to ensure the proper employment of foreign construction workers by their subcontractors. The measure has met with some success. Since its implementation, approximately 25% of the subcontractors' applications had not been endorsed by main contractors. The main contractors' involvement has helped to reduce the incidence of abuse to some extent.

Once foreign workers are brought in by the subcontractors on the support of main contractors, the subcontractors and main contractors would be accountable for the accommodation and placements of foreign workers should they be subsequently displaced. Main contractors have the resources to house workers abandoned by their subcontractors, or transfer their employment to other subcontractors within the same project or in other projects.

It is thus not true that main contractors have no control over the foreign workers employed by the subcontractors. These foreign workers were brought in to work on their projects in the first instance. Therefore, requiring main contractors to share the responsibility with their subcontractors is necessary to avoid abuses and illegal practices.