CNN —
A manual laborer from India has successfully sued his employers in Singapore for negligence after he fell off the back of an overcrowded lorry, in a rare legal win for migrant workers that has renewed debate about their treatment in the wealthy city state.
Ramalingam Murugan, a 37-year-old father of three from the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, had fractured his leg in 2021 while disembarking from an overcrowded truck, leaving him unable to work, court documents said.
The accident had caused him immense pain, his lawyer Muhamad Ashraf Syed Ansarai from the Yeo Perumal Mohideen Law Corporation told CNN.
“He injured himself coming down from a lorry which was overcrowded – a simple thing that turned out to be risky,” Ansarai said. “But it is not uncommon for companies, especially those involved in heavy construction, to take risk assessments for granted,” he added.
Singapore, one of the world’s richest and most developed countries, has benefited enormously from cheap foreign labor for decades.
Workers like Murugan and others from countries in the region like Bangladesh, China and Vietnam take on difficult and often dangerous jobs working in construction and the maritime industry, toiling outdoors for long hours sometimes in extreme weather, and without minimum wage.
To get to work sites from their dormitories which are located on the outskirts of the city state, they are transported on the back of lorries – often overcrowded and without passenger seats or seat...
Pakistan on April 22, Thursday urged the United Nations to call upon India to restore full implementation of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), warning that New Delhi’s “illegal” decision to hold the ...