SINGAPORE - The man with his right arm draped casually over Mohammad's shoulders as they walk out of a metro station could be mistaken for the Bangladeshi guest worker's best buddy.

But V. Balakrishnan has been hired to track him down and ship him home - and the smiling Mohammad suddenly bolts, dropping a small bag of possessions and kicking away his flip-flops in his haste to escape.

Watching Mohammad's bright red shirt rapidly disappearing into the distance Balakrishnan says: "See, I told you he surely run."

Balakrishnan works for UTR Services, a company hired by employers to find and repatriate foreign workers who are reported missing or who are no longer needed by the companies that sponsored their visas.

Under Singapore law, employers are responsible for repatriating guest workers whose contracts lapse or are terminated.

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Balakrishnan and his partner traced Mohammad's whereabouts and staked out his forest hideout near Singapore's border with Malaysia for five days, only to lose him in the end.

Labour-starved and densely populated Singapore employs around 900,000 guest workers like Mohammad and has strict laws against those staying beyond their allotted time, generating business for repatriation companies like UTR Services.

Such firms, which get paid around $250 per case, have drawn criticism from human rights groups who accuse them of resorting to unsavoury methods to force workers to board flights home.

"Repatriation companies use force, violence and illegally confine workers against their will," said Jolovan Wham, executive director of Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (HOME).

"The workers are usually seized and locked up at the repatriation company's premises against their will... this is kidnapping and wrongful confinement, and can be classified as penal code offences, which are offences against the law."

Wham said some foreign workers had gone to HOME for help.

"The repatriation company men are careful not to leave any visible injuries on the workers to avoid any possible investigation by the police. Men from the repatriation companies also threaten and verbally abuse the workers into agreeing to leave," he added.