By Tan May Ping

THE foreign talent debate in Singapore is a rather emotional one as it often centres on foreigners taking our jobs and earning bigger salaries.

Foreigners who are loyal not to Singapore, but to the highest paycheck.

But not all foreign talent come to our shores in a position of privilege and power.

There are the foreign workers at construction sites, shipyards and public housing estates who come here in the hope of breaking out of the poverty cycle in their home countries.

Often times, they have to beg and borrow to pay agents thousands of dollars to get them work here.

They are comforted by what they have heard about Singapore: lawful, efficient and laden with opportunities.

But too many times, we get foreign workers who find themselves without proper jobs because of unscrupulous agents, either back home or here.

Or those who are mistreated by their employers, who fail to pay their salaries or who put them up in poor living conditions.

And there are probably many more cases that go unreported, because these workers tend to be poorly educated and are unaware of the available recourses.

It is tragic that such blatant affronts to human rights persist in a first-world country like ours.

Perhaps it is time that concrete steps are taken to eradicate these malpractices.

Has the time come for an inter-governmental effort to help these workers?

One way is to work with the governments in the workers' home countries to educate them so that they know what they are getting themselves into.

It is arguably the responsibility of foreign governments to look after the welfare of their citizens.

However, once we accept these workers into Singapore, we too have to accept a measure of responsibility for their welfare.

When employers here are found to have committed violations, swift and deterrent action should be taken against them to serve as a warning to other errant employers.

Another gripe that workers have is that they are often not allowed to find alternative work or can only do so under very restrictive conditions while their cases are being investigated.

But these workers have no money and nowhere to stay, forcing them to borrow money and put up with friends or live on the streets.

The Government has always emphasised the importance of these workers to our economy, as they do jobs that many Singaporeans are no longer willing to do.

But are we giving them a fair deal?

This commentary was first published in The New Paper on Aug 8, 2008.