Besides having lost their business licences, MS Bushra Employment Agency, CM Manpower Centre and Angel Maids Agency have also lost their security deposit of $10,000 each for breaching the regulations of the Ministry of Manpower (MOM).

MOM told The Straits Times yesterday that the maids' employers were also issued warning letters for having been complicit in hiring them.

The directors of the three errant agencies will be barred from carrying on in the business - they are not permitted to manage other employment agencies.

A spokesman for MOM said the length of the ban depends on the type of infringement. Offences last year and this year have mainly been illegal employment or deployment cases.

Between January and this month, MOM revoked the licences of four agents, including the latest three. Three others could not renew their licences.

Last year, four licences were revoked, and six were not renewed.

Mr Aw Kum Cheong, director of MOM's foreign manpower management division, said the ministry wants to remind employers not to employ maids without valid work permits - even on a trial basis.

MOM said MS Bushra Employment Agency, which lost its licence in June, was convicted in court and fined $400 three months earlier for assigning a maid with no work permit to an employer three years ago. The maid worked two weeks on a 'trial basis'.

CM Manpower Centre was fined $1,000 in January for abetting in the illegal employment of a maid for five days in July last year.

Two months later, the licensee was convicted and fined $700 for withholding the passport of the same maid for over a month. The agency's licence was revoked last month.

Angel Maids Agency, which lost its licence this month, was convicted in court and fined $7,200 for allowing a maid without a work permit to work for two employers on three occasions.

The president of the Association of Employment Agencies (Singapore), Mr Abdul Jalil Aliyar Razzy, said MOM has warned agents repeatedly against letting maids without permits work under any circumstances.

He noted that while delays in work permit applications sometimes lead to rules being broken, there are 'some unscrupulous agents' who let maids work because they want to please their clients, the employers.

arlina@sph.com.sg