"Employers who do not pay salaries may be prosecuted by the ministry," it said in an email to AFP, adding the new condition that wages must be paid within a week came into effect last month and applied to new hires.

Employers who fail to comply can be fined up to S$5000 (US$3100), jailed up to six months or both.

Some 150,000 foreign women work in Singapore as domestic helpers, mostly from Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and India.

They are one of the few groups of workers that are not covered by Singapore's employment act, meaning there are no maximum hours per week they can work nor laws on minimum wages or annual leave days.

As elsewhere in Asia, there are frequent stories in Singapore of employers abusing their maids and retaliatory acts.

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