2 30 May 2010 ●
THE NEW PAPER ON SUNDAY
News
REPORTS: MAUREEN KOH and GAN LING KAI
tnp@sph.com.sg
S
HE had big dreams when she left her family in
Zhejiang province in China and came to Singa-
pore.
Miss Ke-er: Borrowed The former factory worker arrived with just one
piece of luggage, lured by the promise of easy money to
$14,000 to work here, build a better life for her factory-worker parents and
two younger brothers.
too late to turn back A year later, the petite woman realises that “many,
many miles stand between my life now and my
dreams”.
She can’t even return home – not until she earns
enough to pay off the debts the family incurred to send
her here.
Miss Ke-er, 25, told The New Paper on Sunday in
rapid-fire Mandarin: “The agent (who arranged her
trip) told me that I’d have to pay up nearly $6,000 for
grooming and wardrobe fees if I decide to end my
contract prematurely.”
Her plight mirrors that of 24-year-old karaoke
lounge hostess Li Hong Yan, whose body was found
floating in the lap pool of a Sentosa Cove bungalow on
March 24.
The New Paper on Sunday team interviewed 25
women from various provinces in China who are work-
ing in nightclubs or walking the streets here.
Seek better life
They come here seeking a better life, hoping to
make money or find a husband.
But they often end up stranded and desolate with no
one to turn to for help, mainly because – as most of
them are fully aware – they are breaking the law. (See
report on facing page.)
Some, however, claimed that they are victims of
rogue agents who misled them into believing “there’s a
pot of gold in Singapore”.
Miss Ke-er is here on a student’s pass but confessed
that she “has yet to attend a single English lesson” in
the private school. She paid only the first instalment of
her fees.
Miss Na-li: Cheated by Each day, she starts work at noon in a massage
parlour, providing “any and every kind of service to
Geylang clients, worried anyone who is willing to pay”.
Around 6pm, she rushes home to a three-room flat
about marriage prospects in Chinatown for a change of clothes and a quick bite
before heading for a KTV lounge on Havelock Road.
At this lavish nightclub, she morphs into “someone
whom even my parents will not be able to recognise”
and “sell my voice, my smiles...even my body”, said
Miss Ke-er.
They borrow money to work as lounge hostesses here,
but get cheated by rogue agents and violent customers
CONNED
& SCORNED
Despised by many and
aware they’re breaking
law, they stay trapped
in web of abuse
Her “lifestyle” turned out to be quite different from
what she had been told.
She claimed: “The agent in China said we didn’t
have to worry about finding work here, but that it was
more important to ‘land on the shore’ first.”
With her parents’ help, she raised nearly $14,000 –
part of the sum was to pay for the security deposit – by
borrowing from relatives, friends and a moneylender.
Miss Ke-er said: “I didn’t want to end up like my
parents, working from morning till night and earning
barely enough to put three warm meals on the table.”
She also wanted to earn more to keep her brothers,
15 and 11, in school.
“What I couldn’t accomplish (in studies), I hope my
brothers can,” she said.
Her first shock on arriving here came when the
agent took her to a “seedy-looking bar” in Geylang.
Miss Ke-er said: “It wasn’t like I was dumb. I knew
there were ‘sacrifices’ that had to come with the easy
money, but I just didn’t expect the place to look worse
than some of the karaoke lounges back home.
“I was also uncomfortable with the way the bar
owner kept smiling lecherously at me.”
She worked all of three days there before asking the
agent for a “transfer”.
Miss Ke-er said: “That was the start of a bad mis-
take.”
She claimed her agent told her she had to fork out
another sum of money for grooming services, which
included vocal and dance training.
“By then, it was too late to turn back – I could not let
my parents down. There were debts to pay and I
couldn’t simply walk away. I had no choice but to
agree.”
She got three days of lessons.
She now pays the man about $500 a month from her
earnings and reckons it’ll take another eight months
before she can clear the debt here.
The first few months were terrible, said Miss Ke-er.
“I threw up every other night, and each morning
when I looked at myself in the mirror, I wanted to
smash the reflection.”
She also caved in and offered sex to a Singaporean
businessman who had been her regular supporter at
the nightclub for four months.
He paid $1,200 for taking her out and the extra
service – half of which she quietly pocketed and did not
give to the mamasan.
Miss Ke-er said: “I’d sacrificed my dignity, my
body... I didn’t see why she (the mamasan) was entitled
to anything for doing nothing.”
Her family is in the dark about what she does.
“They only know I’m working in a nightclub, earn-
ing about $3,000 a month. I tell them it’s just drinking
and singing with the customers,” she said.
“My mother is doubtful but I always assure her that
the strict laws in Singapore don’t allow any hanky-pan-
ky.
“But no one’s really complaining because each
month I send home $2,000 to $2,500.”
Yet what she really wants now – even though she has
settled into a better routine – is to return home.
By comparison, Miss Na-li, a 20-year-old from Shen-
yang, started on a rockier path. She came here shortly
after her father’s death in 2008.
She said: “We didn’t have any assets except for the
house, which we sold to settle my father’s gambling
debts.
“It’s just my mother and me – two women with no
skills. I decided that I might as well take the risk and
come here.”
Social visit pass
Here on a long-term social visit pass, Miss Na-li has
worked as a beer promoter and a prostitute in Geylang,
and a masseuse at two massage parlours in Chinatown.
“You name it, I’d have done it. I’ve had customers
who sneaked off without paying me after sex,” she said.
“Some turn nasty when pressed for payment and
threaten to report me to the authorities.”
She added: “Who can I turn to for help? The com-
mon people scorn women like me and I can’t possibly
go to the police, right?”
But life for Miss Na-li has turned better since Janu-
ary. She is now one of the more sought-after hostesses
at two KTV lounges on Havelock Road.
She said: “Just when I thought of giving up, I met a
fellow villager who works at one of the KTV spots.
“She recommended me to her mamasan, who liked
me at once. I can earn about $3,000 a month but it
comes with a sacrifice.”
THE NEW PAPER ON SUNDAY 30 May 2010 ●
Miss Na-li added: “I’d hoped to marry a Singapore
man and hopefully arrange for my mother to live with
me here.
“But which man can accept a woman like me?”
Unlike Miss Ke-er and Miss Na-li, who seemed to
have accepted their fate, Miss Qiao-jing, a 22-year-old
from Guangzhou, wants out.
In a 45-minute interview, she repeated “I hate it
here” more than 20 times, but claimed she is unable to
return home because “my father will kill me”.
Miss Qiao-jing, who is also here on a long-term
social visit pass, said: “He borrowed so much money to
arrange for me to come here.
“He wanted to send my younger sister here along
with me, but I dissuaded him because I didn’t want her
to be ‘zhao ta’ (ruined in Mandarin).”
It was only when she promised to remit at least
$2,500 a month that her father relented.
She did not want to give more details about her
family, except that she also has two younger brothers.
Her mother walked out on the family 10 years ago.
Miss Qiao-jing works as a food stall helper from
noon to 7pm but transforms into a street prostitute in
Geylang from 9pm to 3am.
She said: “I’ve no other choice. Tell me how else I
can earn enough money.”
When she gets beaten up by sadistic customers or
when they refuse to pay, she puts it down to pure bad
luck.
Said Miss Qiao-jing with a derisive laugh: “Then
what do you expect? Do you think anyone will be
willing to help someone – no matter how pitiful – like
me?
“Please, we just live and let live. And if we can’t take
the hardship and have nowhere to go, then maybe,
that’s when our lives must end.”
3
Activists: Help, not
just punish them
REPORT: GAN LING KAI
ganlk@sph.com.sg
WHEN we see someone in trouble, the right thing
to do is to offer help.
Yes, even to those working in sex-related
industries – legal or otherwise.
That is what social activists told The New
Paper on Sunday as they recalled stories of
foreign sex workers and KTV hostesses cheated
by agents or robbed by street thugs.
“Some of these women may have done
something wrong, but we should first help them
before meting out the penalty,” said Mr John
Gee, 56, the president of Transient Workers
Count Too (TWC2).
TWC2 mainly counsels male foreign
construction workers and female domestic
helpers, but since 2005, a handful of female
foreign sex workers have approached the group
for help every year, he said.
Based on what Mr Gee hears from staff of
various embassies and the people he counsels,
he estimates that a few hundred foreign sex
workers are cheated or intimidated every year.
Some women are told by their employers to
cough up large sums of money, such as
expenses for lodging, only after they have
arrived in Singapore, he added.
Said Mr Gee: “Some thought they can choose
their clients, but they soon discover they have to
serve any man who comes their way.”
He said the women’s plight is usually ignored
because they are seen as “bad women who are
out to cheat local men of their money”.
Most of them arrive in Singapore on social
visit passes and some become overstayers.
Dare not get help
As it is illegal for them to work here, they
dare not approach the authorities for help, he
said. “They are caught between a rock and a
hard place.”
Under the Employment of Foreign Manpower
Act, foreigners caught working illegally can be
fined up to $5,000 and/or jailed up to 12 months.
Miss Wong Yock Leng, 41, also believes it’s
important to help these women.
She is a project coordinator with the Student
Christian Movement, which reaches out to sex
workers in Geylang in various ways, including
providing health care information.
“There are many factors that drive them
here, including heavy debts back home for some
of them,” she said. She has met sex workers
from China, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines
and Vietnam.
Some used to work in KTV lounges, she said,
but later became freelance prostitutes because
they couldn’t handle the long nights of drinking.
Some Chinese prostitutes told her recently
that they had been robbed.
“The men pretended to be customers but
started hitting the women once they got to the
hotel rooms,” Miss Wong said.
The victims did not dare to make police
reports for fear of being arrested for illegal
prostitution.
A total of 7,614 foreign women were arrested
for vice-related activities last year, up from
5,047 in 2008.