If you want to
do a study of Singapore, you could do no worse than to read the “White Tiger”
by Aravind Adiga. This book irritates the hell out of my expat Indian friends
because he gives the “shinning India” that former Indian Prime Minister, Atal
Bihari Vajpayee a “good dressing down” in a very sarcastic manner. The novel’s
main character talks about India being divided into the “light” and the “darkness”
and divides the caste system into “men with bellies” and “men without bellies.”
As much as my
Singaporean friends would hate to admit, what the White Tiger describes of
India, also applies to Singapore when it comes to the area of foreign worker
relations. If you look at the industries involving foreign labour, there is
inevitably the “light” and “dark” Singapore. Talking about light and darkness
in these industries has racial undertones in as much as the people living in
the “light” are inevitably Chinese and thus fair skinned and the people living
in the “dark” are usually South Asians, who are inevitably a darker shade of
pink.
The differences
between the light and dark in these industries is more than skin deep. The
people in the light inevitably live comfortable lives, whilst the lives of the
people in the dark, is well, pretty dark.
Covid-19 made
this very clear. The thing that caused our first major outbreak that led to the
initial circuit breaker in April 2020 came from an outbreak in the worker dormitories,
which is filled with people who live in the darkness. It shouldn’t have
surprised anyone because, foreign workers had died of other diseases due to unsanitary
living conditions and a virus that thrives on close human contact found a very
fertile breading ground in the worker dormitories. The then Minister for
Manpower, Ms. Josephine Teo had the unenviable task of admitting that the
worker dormitories were unsatisfactory and a government that made so much about
doing the right thing rather than the easy thing was also forced to admit that they
had held back on pushing the construction industry to upgrade conditions for
workers because the industry would squeal about the rising costs.
At the onset of
the outbreak, the government stepped in and agreed to share the costs in
helping the dormitory operators get their facilities up to a livable standard. Personally,
I thought this was offensive. The “dormitory” business is highly profitable,
doesn’t create anything of great value or create high paying jobs for Singaporeans
so there’s no logical or moral reason for the tax payer to subsidize them for providing
the basics to their customers. Singapore takes great pride in being “non-welfare,”
especially when it comes to lower income people asking for a few cents more. I
took issue with this and got a letter published in the Straits Times Forum (Singapore’s
flagship daily) questioning why companies like Centurion Corporation, which made
S$103 million in profit on revenue of $133 million should receive money from
the tax payer. My letter can be found at:
https://www.straitstimes.com/forum/forum-let-dormitory-operators-face-the-music-themselves
Mr. Koh Chee Min,
the CEO of Centurion Corporation thought I was worthy enough of a reply and set
out to set me straight on my “mistaken beliefs” about how dormitory operator’s
function. He accepted that standards had to be raised in view of Covid and
assured the public in his letter that he was glad that we had discovered
concern for migrant workers. His letter can be found at:
You could argue
that mistakes were bound to happen in the initial stages of the pandemic. It
was unique situation and the government had its reasons for stepping in to help
the dormitory operators to bring their buildings up to scratch. You would also
have assumed that the government and the operators would have worked some form
of contingency planning.
Let’s be clear,
the Singapore government is known around the world for being far sighted. Our government
is known for planning for every possible scenario.
Yet, more than
one year after the tax payer was forced to bail out a highly profitable
industry, the issues have clearly not been solved. This was made clear when
riot police had to be called in to deal with workers in the Westlite Jalan Tukang
Dormitory who had the audacity to be unhappy about their living conditions (contrary
to popular belief, people who are forced to live in disease causing conditions are
bound to get upset and you cannot argue that the people making others live in
such conditions are the victims). The story can be found at:
He sleeps here
in a pandemic
So, here’s the
question – if the tax payer had to step into subsidise the dormitory owners in
an extraordinary time, why was it such that this incident happened? The only
response that the employer (SembCorp Marine) and the dormitory operator (Westlite,
which is owned by Centurion Corporation) have offered an apology of sorts and
mentioned something about conducting regular testing.
However, why is
there even a need for an apology. The incident should never have happened in
the first place. Unlike last year, we know more about Covid and its clear that protocols
should have been put into place. They clearly were not and I’ve argued in
public that this is not how things should be, as expressed in my letter which
was published by the Straits Times:
Tax payer money
was used to ensure that the dormitories would not be an issue in the fight
against Covid. Yet this has not been the case. Hopefully the tax payer did not
have to help sustain the lifestyle of Mr. Koh’s boss’s wife:
https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/home-design/party-in-season
So, she can continue
living here:
It should be
noted that Centurion Corporation’s financial figures have remained very
healthy. While they have dipped a little (which business hasn’t in these
times), the shareholders have no reason to be unhappy with what’s being
delivered:
https://centurion.listedcompany.com/financials.html
Covid-19 has caused
a lot of misery around the world. However, it has caused many of us to relook
at social contracts. Why should the highly profitable receive tax payer
subsidies to provide the service that they’re selling? Shouldn’t people who
take public money be held accountable to the public?
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