- Joined
- Aug 8, 2008
- Messages
- 3,619
- Points
- 48
http://www.asiaone.com/News/The+New+Paper/Story/A1Story20100810-231395.html
Tue, Aug 10, 2010
The New Paper
What it takes to be a female repatriation escort
IN HER job, getting into a physical tussle is sometimes unavoidable.
Scratch her or kick her and she won't flinch. Just don't mess with her fingernails.
Miss Marilyn Poh, 30, is a repatriation escort.
She looks for runaway foreign workers and escorts them for repatriation if they are found.
The 1.72m-tall, 72kg Miss Poh told The New Paper on Sunday: "I don't mind getting kicked on the shin.
"Just don't break my acrylic manicured fingernails. I get really angry when that happens."
She quit her job as a nutritionist two years ago to join A Team Services, to help a friend who runs the business.
Miss Poh, who holds a diploma in hotel management, said she is on stand-by daily as missing workers can pop up any time.
If the worker is a woman, her male colleagues would not want to be involved as they can be accused of molest if things get ugly.
Some of these missing women have been found in Geylang working as streetwalkers, said Miss Poh.
She added: "To avoid getting weird stares, I make sure I wear a T-shirt instead of a low-cut top when I search for the women in Geylang."
Trained in self-defence
Miss Poh has seen women who turn violent on the way to the airport because they do not want to leave the country. Those in tears have sob stories to tell.
Miss Poh, who is trained in self-defence, said she has had the occasional bruises on her limbs left by these women. Sometimes, she has to counsel them.
She is one of five women among her company's 20 repatriation escorts.
Her boss, the company's operations manager, Mr Peter Ng, 43, said he is prepared to hire more women as repatriation escorts if necessary.
"My female employees cannot be too small in size," he said. "Most importantly, they have to be street smart."
Female repatriation escorts are in demand now.
UTR Services employs four of them.
Its director, Mr J Ravi, 42, said: "We hired one more female employee this year because there are now more missing female foreign workers."
Nearly a third of 33 KTV lounge operators The New Paper on Sunday spoke to recently said they have had foreign women employees who ran away in the last two years.
But the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) said it had monitored the number of missing foreign workers closely and the number had remained stable over the years.
While MOM did not provide the exact number of cases, its spokesman said it had not recorded a trend of more runaway female foreign workers.
It is possible that many employers choose not to report missing workers to the authorities - at least not immediately.
Mr Ravi said: "They are afraid they will end up forfeiting the $5,000 security deposit they have left with MOM for each worker. So they choose to look for the missing workers on their own or turn to us for help."
He estimates that about 80 per cent of his clients did not go to the authorities immediately after the workers were discovered missing.
Mr Ravi said his company saw about 10 cases of missing foreign workers - of which about two were women- every month in 2008.
This year, his company has seen about 15 cases of missing workers monthly, with women accounting for a quarter of these cases.
Mr Ng of A Team Services said female foreign workers who ran away were "few and far between in the past".
"But this year, my company has already handled more than 10 cases of missing female foreign workers," he added. "Five of them have still not been found." Some of these runaway workers - both male and female - may try to escape when confronted by the repatriation escorts.
Mr Ravi said: "It becomes more complicated when the runaway worker is a woman. We don't want our male employees to be accused of molest."
Case in point: Two China KTV singers from a night club on Orchard Road ran away in June.
When found by their employer in Geylang last month, they struggled and shouted that they were being molested.
The women were repatriated the next day. Miss Poh was part of the team that took them to the airport.
So what does her 40-year-old boyfriend and her family think of her job?
They have gotten used to the hazards of the job and are not unduly worried, she said.
"Actually, I am just like any other girl. I like to watch movies and go shopping," she added.
This article was first published in The New Paper
Tue, Aug 10, 2010
The New Paper
What it takes to be a female repatriation escort
IN HER job, getting into a physical tussle is sometimes unavoidable.
Scratch her or kick her and she won't flinch. Just don't mess with her fingernails.
Miss Marilyn Poh, 30, is a repatriation escort.
She looks for runaway foreign workers and escorts them for repatriation if they are found.
The 1.72m-tall, 72kg Miss Poh told The New Paper on Sunday: "I don't mind getting kicked on the shin.
"Just don't break my acrylic manicured fingernails. I get really angry when that happens."
She quit her job as a nutritionist two years ago to join A Team Services, to help a friend who runs the business.
Miss Poh, who holds a diploma in hotel management, said she is on stand-by daily as missing workers can pop up any time.
If the worker is a woman, her male colleagues would not want to be involved as they can be accused of molest if things get ugly.
Some of these missing women have been found in Geylang working as streetwalkers, said Miss Poh.
She added: "To avoid getting weird stares, I make sure I wear a T-shirt instead of a low-cut top when I search for the women in Geylang."
Trained in self-defence
Miss Poh has seen women who turn violent on the way to the airport because they do not want to leave the country. Those in tears have sob stories to tell.
Miss Poh, who is trained in self-defence, said she has had the occasional bruises on her limbs left by these women. Sometimes, she has to counsel them.
She is one of five women among her company's 20 repatriation escorts.
Her boss, the company's operations manager, Mr Peter Ng, 43, said he is prepared to hire more women as repatriation escorts if necessary.
"My female employees cannot be too small in size," he said. "Most importantly, they have to be street smart."
Female repatriation escorts are in demand now.
UTR Services employs four of them.
Its director, Mr J Ravi, 42, said: "We hired one more female employee this year because there are now more missing female foreign workers."
Nearly a third of 33 KTV lounge operators The New Paper on Sunday spoke to recently said they have had foreign women employees who ran away in the last two years.
But the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) said it had monitored the number of missing foreign workers closely and the number had remained stable over the years.
While MOM did not provide the exact number of cases, its spokesman said it had not recorded a trend of more runaway female foreign workers.
It is possible that many employers choose not to report missing workers to the authorities - at least not immediately.
Mr Ravi said: "They are afraid they will end up forfeiting the $5,000 security deposit they have left with MOM for each worker. So they choose to look for the missing workers on their own or turn to us for help."
He estimates that about 80 per cent of his clients did not go to the authorities immediately after the workers were discovered missing.
Mr Ravi said his company saw about 10 cases of missing foreign workers - of which about two were women- every month in 2008.
This year, his company has seen about 15 cases of missing workers monthly, with women accounting for a quarter of these cases.
Mr Ng of A Team Services said female foreign workers who ran away were "few and far between in the past".
"But this year, my company has already handled more than 10 cases of missing female foreign workers," he added. "Five of them have still not been found." Some of these runaway workers - both male and female - may try to escape when confronted by the repatriation escorts.
Mr Ravi said: "It becomes more complicated when the runaway worker is a woman. We don't want our male employees to be accused of molest."
Case in point: Two China KTV singers from a night club on Orchard Road ran away in June.
When found by their employer in Geylang last month, they struggled and shouted that they were being molested.
The women were repatriated the next day. Miss Poh was part of the team that took them to the airport.
So what does her 40-year-old boyfriend and her family think of her job?
They have gotten used to the hazards of the job and are not unduly worried, she said.
"Actually, I am just like any other girl. I like to watch movies and go shopping," she added.
This article was first published in The New Paper
