Singapore to deport 29 Chinese bus drivers

A senior management of SMRT said she has heard of the grievances of the Chinese workers but had received no written complaint. The chief executive officer of the company was taking a leave overseas and showed up at the workers' dormitory for the first time on Friday, two days after the arrests were made.

The Chinese Embassy in Singapore said it was "very much concerned" about the arrests and had made consular visits to the arrested drivers.

The Chinese workers had complained of unequal pay rise as they received a pay rise of 75 Singapore dollars, while the company's Malaysian drivers received pay rises of 275 Singapore dollars, in addition to a difference in bonus.

He Junling, who posted a message on the Chinese website baidu. com, also complained that the company had been using a change from six work days to five to cut the pay for overtime work. Another driver was quoted as saying that the Chinese drivers could now earn only about 1,400 Singapore dollars, compared with 2,000 Singapore dollars earlier.

A photo provided by a reader to local Chinese daily Lianhe Zaobao showed the company insensitively used the phrase "excluding Chinese service leaders (bus drivers) " in several places in a written notice.

The Ministry of Manpower has said that SMRT must address the grievances of the workers quickly.

The government-linked public transport operator provides 25 percent of the bus services in Singapore. It also operates most of the mass rapid transit systems, which has experienced several major disruptions over the past year or so.

Singapore has about 1 million foreign workers and employees working in the country. The construction and some of the services sectors have been heavily dependent on foreign cheap labor.