This followed our report yesterday about a handphone video which shows a former Sun City supervisor called Alan beating an unidentified worker outside the zoo.

The video had been circulating among Sun City's workers and employees of Wildlife Reserves Singapore (WRS), which runs the zoo, Night Safari and Jurong BirdPark.

A WRS employee, who gave his name only as Lawrence, sent the video to The New Paper after Mr Nordin, 32, was mauled to death in the white tiger enclosure last month.

The identity of the worker in the video, taken three months ago, is not known. Mr Nordin started working at the zoo two months ago.

It remains a mystery why Mr Nordin had entered the tiger enclosure, but he was agitated at work earlier that day and had told colleagues that he would not see them again.

His elder sister, Madam Nora Montong, 34, a housewife, told The New Paper over the phone: 'As far as I know, he never said anything negative about his work.

'Maybe he didn't want to burden us.'

'Everything was very good'

In a separate interview, his younger sister, Madam Aida Montong, 28, an assistant welfare officer, said the same thing.

She said in Malay: 'He has never complained about his work. In fact, he said the food and accommodation was not bad, and that everything was very good.

'I don't know if he was hiding anything from us to prevent us from worrying.'

She said her brother had worked for Sun City for only about four months before his death. He was based at a hotel for two months before moving to the zoo.'

She added: 'Maybe the abuse had only happened to his co-worker in the video. Or maybe he didn't tell us because we would have told him to come back.'

There was also some confusion about his salary which, according to an earlier report was more than $1,000.

Lawrence said the workers earned much less than that.

Madam Aida clarified that her brother earned about RM1,300($550) and the $1,000 figure was due to a miscommunication about currency.

Madam Nora said he didn't send any money back to his family because he apparently didn't know how to use remittance services.

'He told us he would bring back his savings when he returned home in February. He did have to pay the agent some amount, but I don't know how much it was in total,' she said.

Among his personal effects sent back to his family was a little notebook in which he wrote once that he gave $100 to his agent, said Madam Nora.

She added: 'When we talked on the phone, he would say he had enough money to eat. That was all we needed to know.'

Madam Aida said her brother also wrote in the notebook when he would get advances of $100 or $200.

'It was mostly for food. I think his salary was only enough to pay the agent and to cover his daily expenses, I'm not sure if he managed to save anything because he had only worked for such a short period,' she said.

Madam Aida said her mother still cries daily at the thought of her eldest son.

'Last night when she was making kueh (Malay dessert). She started to cry when she remembered that elder brother (Nordin) would call her every evening to ask what she's cooking.

'For now, I'm staying with her instead of going to my home. We don't want her to be alone.'

This article was first published in The New Paper on 3 Dec 2008.