With an aim to give migrant workers better access to justice, a team of SMU students has developed an online salary calculator to help them assess if they are eligible to claim for their salary and provides guidance on the process through which the claims can be made.

The team, comprising law students, Shukrina Salam and Sambhavi Rajangam, economics student Joey Chung, and information systems student Abhyuday Samadder, calls themselves Legal Kaki. All of them are in their fourth year of studies at SMU.

They came together in 2019 at the SMU Legal Innovation and Technology club’s inaugural hackathon. The team presented a set of solutions aimed at improving access to justice across the various areas of law in Singapore and finished with a second runners-up position in the competition.  Since then, they have been working closely with the Singapore Academy of Law (SAL), focusing on improving access to justice related to employment matters.  However, when the pandemic hit, they saw its disproportionately adverse impact on the migrant worker community in Singapore.

“With migrant workers being quarantined in their dorms and not being able to work, there was a lot of anxiety about whether they would continue to be paid. According to MOM advisories, their employers should still make the appropriate leave and salary arrangements for them. However, there loomed a lack of confidence amongst migrant workers,” said Legal Kaki.

The team then learnt that of the multiple hurdles that migrant workers faced in their salary claims process, including language barrier, a lack of awareness and understanding of their legal rights, and the absence of legal representation at the Employment Claims Tribunal.

Their solution to address some of these issues was CalculAID, a salary calculator available free-of-charge.

Launched by SAL on 1 October 2020 at TechLaw.Fest (TLF) 2020 in partnership with Legal Kaki, and made possible by Checkbox.ai., the tool aims to break down salary calculations, raise awareness of employment rights, and empower layperson litigants including migrant workers. Following the soft launch of the tool at TLF, the team now hopes to gather feedback from legal professionals before officially launching it to the migrant worker community.

CalculAID speaks the language of the migrant workers, namely: Tamil, Bangla, Mandarin, Malay and Burmese; thus breaking down the language barrier issue that have impeded the migrant workers’ understanding of the law.  Furthermore, it consolidates the calculations and users’ inputs into a single document that is generated at the end, therefore enabling the user to explain these calculations themselves and defend the amount they are claiming for.  To help migrant workers meet the evidentiary burden and prepare the necessary documents, CalculAID will also suggest supporting documents that may be used to support their claim.

Finally, the report generated also guide the user on the steps to take in the salary claims process, along with some tips for each step.

“With all these features, our team hopes that CalculAID will be the first step in helping migrant workers gain a greater awareness of their employment rights and be empowered to take the first step in claiming for their rightful salary,” said Legal Kaki.