HERE is the plight of migrant workers I want Singaporeans - especially employers - to understand.

These are people who set out from their homes on journeys into the unknown and, along the way, many take a bite off them. There is the recruiter who turns up in a village with stories of the money to be made in wealthier lands. He wants money for his efforts, or perhaps to pay one or two locals whose cooperation he needs, such as a village headman. The worker goes to an agency, which may provide some form of training, obtain the necessary documents and arrange the next stage of the journey.

The agency wants money too: It tots up what it paid to the recruiter, its own charges for the worker's travel expenses, accommodation, food and training, as well as its fee. Depending on the country of origin's regulations, charges are made by the national government for passports, insurance or other documentation. In due course, the worker will be expected to pay to obtain, in principle, approval from Singapore.

These charges amount to a hefty sum. Migrant workers are not expected to pay for them immediately in most sender countries: After all, people who had the money to do that would probably not need to seek work abroad in the first place.

So the agency in the sender country is paid by a partner agency in Singapore, which then needs to recover the money it has paid out and adds its own set of fees for the services it provides.

The sum of money involved by this time for a Filipino or Indonesian domestic worker approaches $2,000. The amount is much higher for a male construction worker from southern India or Bangladesh - a Bangladeshi will typically start work in Singapore carrying a debt of $8,000 to $9,000.

When the Government opened the doors to the recruitment of overseas domestic workers in 1978, it was commonly accepted that the costs of recruitment would be borne by employers.

Over time, a change has crept in. Competing for customers, some agencies offered bargains that many employers found irresistible: the '$0 maid' or the '$88 maid'. The price for this generosity was to be paid by the workers. Their employers were given a 'loan' for their hire, and it was paid back by deductions from the workers' salaries.

And thus it is that people who seek work abroad to support their families and pay for the education of children or siblings often find themselves paying to be employed by wealthier people.

The burden of this debt has grown as the various charges made have crept up without a matching increase in workers' salaries. Payments of between $240 and $300 per month for a new worker are usual, despite the efforts of sender countries to promote increments.

In 2000, a domestic worker was able to repay the 'loan' within the first six months of her employment. Today, it takes eight to 10 months. That makes a big hole in their earnings from a first two-year contract term. At least a third of her income is lost before her family sees a cent of it.

This repayment period is extended if the worker decides she wants to transfer to another employer, for any reason. Some agencies will charge her more than the real cost of processing the documents she needs, and she will pay the equivalent of about a month's salary.

If she is less fortunate, she might be charged two to four months' salary. This does not seem consistent with the claim made by some employers that domestic workers are inclined to flit from one employer to another on a mere whim. On the contrary, most know how expensive and troublesome it can be to change employers and will not do so unless there is reason to.

This is not the end of the story. To leave behind one's family can be hard, but some workers have the heart-rending experience of realising that those they have sacrificed their labour to support are growing away from them.

Instead of intimate family conversations and letters, communication turns into a routine report attached to a request for more money. Stories abound of workers who return home to meet young children who do not recognise them and to find out that the money they have worked so hard for has been misspent.

A return home also means parting with more earnings. The terminal for domestic workers at Jakarta's main airport has long been notorious. There, parasites extract money from returning workers for giving back their passports to them after taking them by deceit, or for transporting them home at exorbitant prices.

Workers also bring back gifts for their families. Often, they would like to be seen in their home communities as successful, so that can mean spending money on entertaining friends and neighbours. Sometimes, remote acquaintances and long-lost relatives show up as well.

Migrant workers subsidise their host economy by providing it with lowly priced labour, and freeing up many of its own citizens to take up better-paid jobs. The sender country gains a valuable supplement to its national income directly through fees and indirectly through the spending of remitted money. Often they return home with their best years behind them and little to show for it all.

The Ministry of Manpower recently introduced changes to prevent additional transfers of costs that employers should bear for domestic workers. However, it did nothing to induce employers to pay the costs that had been transferred to workers in the past and instead produced a chorus of protests from employers who said they were being exploited by their workers.

Do they really know what exploitation means? If they could put themselves in a migrant worker's shoes for a couple of months, they would not think that way. To them, I say, be kinder to the migrant worker in your employment.

The writer is the president of Transient Workers Count Too, an advocacy group for migrant workers.

Photo: Miss Sobiyatun Muhayat, 18, who is from a remote Indonesian village in Banyumas, central Java, left her parents, four elder sisters and a younger brother to come to Singapore three weeks ago.