The Indian man Kandha Samy Ragupathy left his village when he was 23 years old. In those days, he worked as a farmer, got married young, and felt the quiet, heavy weight of wanting more for his family. He got to Singapore without having to pay the agent fee, which is something that many of his peers today can’t say since it costs $13,000. He built a life here, brick by brick and wire by wire, for 27 years. After that, the pay stopped coming in.
His story is not the only one like it. In fact, this is one of more than 400 similar stories about KPA Engineering and its sister company, SK Industries. KPA Engineering and SK Industries are Singapore-based air conditioning contractors whose financial collapse has gotten a lot of attention, both because of how big it is and how long the warning signs were ignored.
More than 100 migrant workers came into the Ministry of Manpower Services Center in Bendemeer on June 22. They weren’t making a lot of noise or holding signs. They were just there, asking for help because their rent wasn’t paid and their salaries weren’t paid. There were more than 400 wage claims by the time the full count was done. Some hadn’t been paid in up to three months.
It’s very hard to throw out this case because of the timeline. There have been red flags about KPA Engineering since at least March 2025, when the nonprofit Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2) raised them. The first worker told the company that he was due a month’s pay. By May, someone else had come forward saying they were owed about S$3,000 for not getting paid correctly since January. In June 2025, a construction worker came forward and claimed S$4,500 in unpaid wages. Then October. Then in June 2026. Six workers from the same company did the same thing over the course of more than a year.
The question of when a pattern turns into a system is a good one to think about. Each case could be explained away by something different, like a cash flow problem, an administrative delay, or an employer having a rough quarter. But if the same organization shows up in a nonprofit’s records fifteen times, it stops looking like a glitch. It looks like a plan at this point.
To be fair, the MOM has said that it was told about problems before the large gathering. After the crisis became public, Ramu Palani Velu’s passport was taken away. He is a director of both KPA Engineering and SK Industries. Cash help has been set up for workers who have been affected. These aren’t little steps. But the people waiting outside of Bendemeer’s office had already been there for months, and some for much longer.
There is something quietly interesting about the fact that an employer allegedly offered a worker a raise if he dropped the claim with the Tripartite Alliance for Dispute Management in at least one other case. He said yes. After that, he went back to TADM in April 2026 and had the same problem. Part of what makes this situation feel less like bad luck and more like structural failure on many levels is the cycle of complaining, getting things fixed, and then relapsing.
People know Singapore as a place where rules are followed and contracts are taken seriously. They also know that workers’ rights are protected, at least on paper. This case doesn’t change that reputation; it just puts it to the test. People who came to work in Singapore paid real wages, made real sacrifices, and sent real money back home. Once, Ragupathy crossed an ocean to take care of his daughters. When he stopped getting paid, they reportedly started sending him money again.
That switch—a father getting money from the kids he left home to take care of—has a weight that no press release can quite address. There is a chance that the next KPA Engineering won’t be as big if there are stronger enforcement mechanisms, earlier intervention thresholds, or better communication between groups like TWC2 and government agencies. For now, it’s still not clear if that conversation will lead to anything useful.
