The 38-year-old CEO of Twelve Cupcakes, Daniel Ong, has called the accusations of foreign worker exploitation made on The Real Singapore (TRS) website “defamatory” and points to “a disgruntled ex staff” as the source.

TRS' website had published allegations by contributor “Vettel” on Monday morning (25 November) that the bakery exploited its foreign staff by requiring them to work 12-hour days, 6 days a week (72 hours) as compared to local hires who work shorter 8-hour days and 5.5 days weekly (44 hours).

The article added that Twelve Cupcakes’ foreign workers only earn S$3 per hour.

In a later article published on late Monday night after 10pm, another TRS contributor “Estrada” pointed towards further discrimination in terms of pay – claiming that staff from China only earned $800 a month while Filipino staff took home some $1,300.

Ong refuted some of the claims made by the articles in a Facebook post while he was in Hong Kong around 6pm on Monday, about 7 hours after the first article was published.

However, the later article submitted by “Estrada” claimed the “CEO is lying” in his response.

Contrary to claims by the TRS contributors Estrada and Vettel, Ong says his company has conducted investigations and ascertained that none of his staff had spoken to TRS.

Ong also issued a second response to the accusations of worker exploitation by the alleged Twelve Cupcakes “outlet supervisor” on his Facebook page in the wee hours of Tuesday morning at 1.47am.

Here’s a partial screengrab of Ong’s salvo:

Source: Daniel Ong Facebook

TRS did not give Ong ample time to respond

In the same FB note, Ong refuted claims by TRS that they had sent him an email on Sunday morning (24 November) seeking clarifications, saying “we received no email in all our records on 24th Nov morning as you claimed in your website”.

This is a screengrab of TRS’ email provided by Ong:

Ong said the first email was sent to him on Monday (25 November) at about 9am seeking clarifications and stating that the article would only be published at night.

Email provided by Daniel Ong

However, despite saying it would only post up the story at night, TRS went ahead to publish the article barely two hours later at 10.52am without giving Ong enough time to respond.

But TRS said on its website that “we did give the company 1 full day to respond to complaint letter sent in by one of our readers and our email this morning to them was just a 2nd and final reminder to them to respond to us”.

TRS a crap website: Ong

In what he said would be his final response, Mr Ong called TRS “a crap website” that “need clicks in order to survive, and therefore sensationalize everything in order to get readership”.

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Twelve Cupcakes  first started business in July 2011 at United Square.

Since then, it has expanded quickly with 12 outlets in Singapore, and even branches in Malaysia and Taiwan.

It is also planning to set up shop in Hong Kong and the Philippines.

In July last year, Ong was caught in a tussle with Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) for not paying licensing fees when reproducing SPH articles about the bakery.

This is the first time Twelve Cupcakes is embroiled in an online exchange with TRS.

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So far, there have been two articles published by TRS with regards to Twelve Cupcakes’ alleged exploiting of foreign workers, all of which have been responded to by the bakery’s owner ex-DJ Daniel Ong in his FB notes.

However, TRS published Ong's first reply but did not publish his second email which clarified some of the allegations from the two TRS' articles.

Ong  added in his last Facebook post aimed at TRS that “after the truth is known, your credibility will be at stake here, and the embarrassment of your baseless and unresearched article will be the main focus.”

Ong also said that he “won't be bothering with going to the lawyers as well because I'm nice like that. And I really believe in karma.”

He concluded by saying that he “will no longer be fueling " hits " to your website anymore” and that “we choose to take the higher ground”, something he feels that TRS “might want to learn”.

Featured Photo from Twelve Cupcakes Facebook Page.

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