THE MANPOWER Ministry's pending prosecution of companies for not meeting their obligations to foreign workers will not put a stop to the most unconscionable of labour abuses.

The firms are being hauled up for allegedly not paying their workers their wages on time and for sending them to work in places not specified in the applications.

These are contractual matters, to the extent that contracts are ever written in the menial-labour service. But mistreatment goes beyond withholding of pay - to sub-human housing provided by employers, dereliction of medical-coverage requirements and threats of cancelling work permits if workers reported violations to the ministry.

Irregularities mercifully are a small part of the scene in a labour migration process that began decades ago, when Singapore imported workers to build its infrastructure and to keep the HDB towns and streets clean.

The ministry can expect many more cases of callous conduct - criminal neglect, really - to surface as poor business tips marginal businesses over. Showing violators no mercy will impress on employers that ill-treatment of defenceless people will bring on their heads the full weight of the law.

Singapore cannot have its observance of the rule of law to be brought into disrepute.

But prosecutions are not enough. To erase the human degradation will require relooking the whole business, to change laws if need be and to enhance penalties. The housing issue is being tackled, with dormitory settlements planned with all the facilities and services foreign workers will need. But no real human-rights advance is possible until labour agents or middlemen here and abroad are eliminated from the process.

The work-permit system should be reviewed to make all companies which need foreign workers the direct recruiters. This will weed out local agents and local affiliates of foreign agents. They are blamed for the rigmarole of men coming on permits but with no immediate work available and for giving bribes to companies to take on more workers. How can this go on?

Labour agents in source countries are not easy to root out. Supplier countries, Bangladesh prominent among them, must be prepared to organise labour registries to process applications without the participation of agents.

Agreements have to be signed with recipient countries to regularise the process. Middlemen who extract impossible sums of money from helpless people and place them deep in debt well before they start to earn any income here are leeches to be exterminated.

This article was first published in The Straits Times on January 14, 2009.