CO129-377 - Governor Sir Lugard - 1911 [5] — Page 94

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without receiving payment for their passage, and if the

labourers accept this passage they at once become Sinkhehs and

are ipso facto deprived of their freedom of contract, since a

refusal to enter into a contract to labour on their arrival at

Singapore renders them liable to imprisonment.

3.

To call the Sinkheh who is recruited in

China as a speculation and disposed of on arrival at his

destination to the highest bidder, a free emigrant is a mis-

-nomer. The Sinkheh (his legal designation in Hongkong is "an

assisted emigrant") is in fact in many ways in a less advantag-

-eous position than a labourer who emigrates under a contract.

The Sinkheh emigrates under a verbal agreement that he will

repay his passage money by entering into a contract on his

arrival at Singapore. If he refuses to enter into a contract he

must prove that he accepted his passage under a misapprehension

and he is not permitted to argue that the terms of the contract

are unreasonable or at least such as he had no reason to expect:

these have already been settled without consulting him by the

Government of the Straits Settlements which in its turn has no

means of checking his complaint as to misrepresentation or his

statements as to the conditions of labour in China. In his

endeavours to protect the Sinkheh, the Examining Officer at

Hongkong