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Seven Employers Charged, Another Convicted for Employment Act Breaches

Employment practices

06 November 2009

Seven employers were charged in the Subordinate Courts this week. Five were charged for failing to provide their workers with the statutory benefits under the Employment Act (EA). These included failing to or under-providing their employees with annual leave, rest day, overtime pay, rest day pay and other infringements such as requiring their employees to work excessive hours and making unauthorised deductions of salaries. Another two employers were charged for not paying salaries to their workers. Please refer to Annex A for the full list and details of employers and charges.

2. One employer was also convicted this week for EA infringements. A cleaning company, Lian Cheng Contracting Pte Ltd, and its Director Cher Peng Ho, failed to provide annual leave for four employees over a period of two to four years. There were also unauthorised deductions from the salaries of three employees between January to April 2008. Each pleaded guilty to 15 charges and were fined $8,500 and $5,500 respectively. Another 16 charges each were taken into consideration during sentencing. Please refer to Annex B for more details.

Employers must fulfil their legal obligations

3. Mr Quek Jen Juan, MOM's Deputy Director of the Labour Relations & Workplaces Division (郭仁运, 人力部劳资关系及福利署副署长), said, "The Employment Act stipulates minimum employment standards to protect the interests of rank-and-file workers. These errant employers had deprived their vulnerable, low wage workers of their rightful statutory benefits. Employers must fulfil their legal obligations and ensure they adopt fair employment standards. We will keep up our enforcement efforts to curb abuses, particularly in sectors where there are more vulnerable workers."

4. Failure to provide statutory employment benefits such as annual leave, rest days, sick leave, overtime and rest day pay in accordance with the law are violations under the Employment Act. It is also an offence to deploy employees to perform work exceeding 12 hours per day or beyond 72 hours of overtime work in a month.

5. Under the Employment Act, a first-time offender is liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding $5,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months or both. For any subsequent offence, an offender shall be liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding $10,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year or both.

6. Since January 2009, 20 companies had been prosecuted for EA infringements.