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Coffeeshop Chit Chat - Charity gets $300,000 to help FTs</TD><TD id=msgunetc noWrap align=right>
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<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>Charity gets $300,000 to help foreign workers
</TD></TR><TR><TD><!-- headline one : end --></TD></TR><TR><TD><!-- Author --></TD></TR><TR><TD class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold" colSpan=2>By Ang Yiying </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
THE year-old NTUC FairPrice Foundation has included foreign workers among those benefiting from its largesse.
It has just made its first gift to a charity benefiting foreign workers - $300,000 to a Catholic humanitarian group for its programmes, including one giving free lunches to more than 100 foreign workers.
The Archdiocesan Commission for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People (ACMI) also runs training courses for foreign domestic workers and arranges for social outings, hospital visits and legal aid for foreign workers.
The FairPrice Foundation, which counts worker welfare among its six strategic aims, is a registered charity funded fully by NTUC FairPrice.
The supermarket chain's managing director of group business Seah Kian Peng, explaining the foundation's move, said migrant workers 'were a group we want to look after as well'.
The foundation has so far given out $7.2 million. Going into its second year, it has pledged to give away 20 per cent more to charitable causes.
Groups it has so far helped include the Community Chest, Food From The Heart and Eldercare Trust.
Its newest beneficiary ACMI has been reaching out to foreign workers since 1998, and running its free lunch programme since 2001.
The programme is backed by donations of rice from the Buddhist Lodge and the efforts of about 60 volunteers who take turns to cook and deliver food packs to a worksite on weekdays.
Each pack consists of rice, vegetables and a meat or egg dish, and costs about $1.50 to make.
For Bangladeshi construction worker Zahir Uddin, 31, who makes about $18 a day excluding overtime pay, the free lunch means saving about $3 a day.
Some employers provide their foreign workers with subsidised meals, which still means they need to pay for part of it, so the free meals help workers to save on this, said ACMI's executive director Elizabeth Tan.
Other groups that provide meals to foreign workers include advocacy group Transient Workers Count Too and anti-poverty group ONE Singapore, which feed foreign workers unable to work because of disputes with their employers or who are waiting for workplace injury compensation.
About 200 such workers get breakfast or dinner on weekdays in Cuff Road in Little India. Manpower Ministry figures put the number of work permit holders here at 870,000, including 190,000 foreign domestic workers and 230,000 foreign construction workers.
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<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>Charity gets $300,000 to help foreign workers
</TD></TR><TR><TD><!-- headline one : end --></TD></TR><TR><TD><!-- Author --></TD></TR><TR><TD class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold" colSpan=2>By Ang Yiying </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
THE year-old NTUC FairPrice Foundation has included foreign workers among those benefiting from its largesse.
It has just made its first gift to a charity benefiting foreign workers - $300,000 to a Catholic humanitarian group for its programmes, including one giving free lunches to more than 100 foreign workers.
The Archdiocesan Commission for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People (ACMI) also runs training courses for foreign domestic workers and arranges for social outings, hospital visits and legal aid for foreign workers.
The FairPrice Foundation, which counts worker welfare among its six strategic aims, is a registered charity funded fully by NTUC FairPrice.
The supermarket chain's managing director of group business Seah Kian Peng, explaining the foundation's move, said migrant workers 'were a group we want to look after as well'.
The foundation has so far given out $7.2 million. Going into its second year, it has pledged to give away 20 per cent more to charitable causes.
Groups it has so far helped include the Community Chest, Food From The Heart and Eldercare Trust.
Its newest beneficiary ACMI has been reaching out to foreign workers since 1998, and running its free lunch programme since 2001.
The programme is backed by donations of rice from the Buddhist Lodge and the efforts of about 60 volunteers who take turns to cook and deliver food packs to a worksite on weekdays.
Each pack consists of rice, vegetables and a meat or egg dish, and costs about $1.50 to make.
For Bangladeshi construction worker Zahir Uddin, 31, who makes about $18 a day excluding overtime pay, the free lunch means saving about $3 a day.
Some employers provide their foreign workers with subsidised meals, which still means they need to pay for part of it, so the free meals help workers to save on this, said ACMI's executive director Elizabeth Tan.
Other groups that provide meals to foreign workers include advocacy group Transient Workers Count Too and anti-poverty group ONE Singapore, which feed foreign workers unable to work because of disputes with their employers or who are waiting for workplace injury compensation.
About 200 such workers get breakfast or dinner on weekdays in Cuff Road in Little India. Manpower Ministry figures put the number of work permit holders here at 870,000, including 190,000 foreign domestic workers and 230,000 foreign construction workers.
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