SATS looking into claims service partner docked S$5 from airport wheelchair assistant’s pay for being 11 seconds late

Ms Low told CNA that she asked to see his payslip, which he showed her on his phone.

“His payslip literally wrote ‘11 seconds late’,” she said, further explaining that the payslip said “something to the extent of deduction and penalty”.

CNA has contacted the MOM and the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) for more information.

According to MOM’s website, employers may make salary deductions for an employee’s absence from work. The authorised salary deductions are listed in the Employment Act. 

The deduction cannot exceed the employee’s salary for the period of absence. For example, if an employee is 30 minutes late, only 30 minutes’ salary can be deducted.

In this case, if 11 seconds were to equate to S$5, that would mean the worker was earning about S$1,636 every hour, or S$13,091 for an eight-hour day.

MOM said on its website that employers should find out why an employee was late and should not “unfairly penalise” the employee if there was a valid reason. Employees should be responsible in coming to work on time and inform their employer as early as possible if they are unable to do so, the ministry added.

The wheelchair assistant said that many of the other wheelchair service staff are elderly workers.

“I feel like increasingly we’re starting to see this culture of profit over people, and it doesn’t feel right when we’re bullying people who are already vulnerable,” said Ms Low.

On Wednesday, Ms Low posted about the incident on LinkedIn. As of Friday evening, the post had more than 100 comments and over 500 likes.

“I think you can see a lot of other people and their anger as well on the LinkedIn post, to say that this is absolutely deplorable,” she said. “And I echo that myself because, to me, it is shameless that our society allows this.”

Demand for special assistance services is expected to grow as Singapore’s population ages and air travel increases. 

Airlines at Changi Airport handle about 2,300 wheelchair assistance requests a day, four in five of them from transfer passengers. Requests rose 20 per cent between 2023 and 2025.