By Ang Yiying
THE number of cases of violence against spouses involving immigrants here has gone up, a leading anti-domestic violence agency said on Thursday.
Providing Alternatives to Violence (Pave) has handled about 240 new spousal abuse cases a year for the past two financial years. Of these, the proportion of cases involving those born overseas has risen from 12 per cent to 22 per cent.
There were a total of 85 such cases over the two years. The bulk of them - 70 - involved the agency counselling abused wives. In one case it helped an abused husband, and it also counselled 14 husbands who had abused their wives.
Pave defines immigrants as those who were born overseas, regardless of how long they have been living here or whether they have attained Singapore permanent resident or citizen status. They could be married to foreign-born or Singapore-born spouses.
It presented the data on Thursday during a half-day symposium which it jointly organised with the Centre for Social Development Asia, which is based at the National University of Singapore.
It said that the dynamics of abuse are similar whether victims are born locally or overseas, but the latter group may face more barriers in getting help.
They may perceive that there is discrimination against them as they are not born here, or face isolation or the lack of a social support network. One particularly vulnerable group are wives on social visit passes who may be threatened with deportation by their husbands.
Pave's head of family development and senior social worker Seah Kheng Yeow said at the event on NUS' Kent Ridge Campus that there was a need to make public education and outreach more accessible to immigrants. This could include translation of resource materials into their native languages or reaching out to them through existing activities held by residents' committees.
So, what is the best solution to stop the abuse?
chop it off
this is the problem with our policies. we allow so many floor traps ina nd allow them to come here find love get married and give offsprings. see every year how many pr or citizneship awarded only. can we substain and recreate our selves? this policy of openign our doors (althoug i will say alreayd it sliek pulling down our pants or opening all our vaginals) to foreigners really is not effective. not only it allows emploters and many other peopleto exploilt to their own ends, tehy create social problems, fasle love relationships marriage and many more. i think it stime we pullup our pants and skirts, close our gates and the most leave our doors open for air circulation. opening a die door is atactuall good,.e ngouh. gahmen may think its something they working on to curb our small island globalixation problem, but we all know its more than what these little solutions can coorrect. oh btw now open door also must reconsider, the air is bad to breath.