Ill health has saved the founder of a leading landscape company from a jail term over a phantom- worker scam.
Toh Eng Hock, 69 and suffering from ailments including high blood pressure and heart disease, was instead fined $42,000. The company, Toh Eng Hock Construction, was fined $48,000.
District Judge Jill Tan told the former company chairman, also known as Toh Ah Hook, that a jail term was the norm in cases in which the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) had been deceived into granting work passes.
But she agreed with Toh’s lawyers Shashi Nathan and Tania Chin that imprisonment might endanger his life, given his illness; a letter from the Singapore Prisons Service submitted in court said its medical services would be unable to manage his medical conditions.
Toh pleaded guilty to 14 of 28 counts of lying to the Controller of Work Passes in his application for work passes for 14 foreign workers in September 2007.
The company was ineligible to hire that many foreign workers based on the number of local workers on its payroll, so he had inflated the number of locals employed by the company.
Investigations showed that the company had hired – and was paying Central Provident Fund contributions for – an average of 257 Singaporeans between April and June 2007. In truth, however, an average of 99 of those 257 were phantom workers, never hired at all.
MOM prosecutor Lin Yixin said that, had the ministry’s Work Pass Division known then that not all the local workers were in fact actively employed, it would never have approved the 14 applications for work permits for foreign workers.
A representative of the company pleaded guilty on its behalf to 16 similar charges; another 16 were considered during sentencing.
Mr Nathan said Toh, who built up the company from scratch, has turned over management of the company to his sons. He also gave up all his posts in the company recently.
Toh and the company could have been fined up to $15,000 on each charge, and he could have been jailed up to 12 months on each charge.
