One of my
friends sent me a copy of an article, which announced that a migrant worker by
the name of Zakir Hossain had been sent back to Bangladesh. Under normal circumstances
this isn’t news. Migrant workers get sent back all the time for all sorts of reasons
all the time. However, this case was very special because Mr. Hossain refuses
to be what Singapore’s system on migrant labour expects him to be – he is a brown
skinned person from what Donald Trump would call an “s**hole” country who wasn’t
afraid to voice his opinions.” According to the Ministry of Manpower, Mr. Hossain
was making false statements which could have “incited migrant workers at
Westlite Tukang and elsewhere, inflamed their emotions and possibly caused
incidents of public disorder.” More of the story can be found at:
https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/migrant-worker-zakir-hossain-work-pass-not-renewed-mom-1930891
However, while
I love the fact that Singapore is an orderly place where people like me, educated
working professionals can jerk off in front of a computer in an airconditioned
office on a daily basis, I don’t believe that the privileges should come at the
expenses of other people.
I can except
that a certain amount of exploitation is required for the capitalist system to
function. We all want to maximise profit and will try to look for avenues to maximise
revenue and minimise cost. People have the surprising ability to tolerate crap
and by and large people from the “S**holes” of the world have a bigger amount
of tolerance for crap than most. A dollar earned in Singapore is 56.32 Indian Rupees
or 66.56 Bangladeshi Takka or 39.21 Philippine Pesos, so it’s worth putting up with
crap in Singapore if it helps feed and uplift the family at home. I get that
and I have no issues with the concept of “cheap labour,” in as much as it is a “win-win.”
The labourers get work and earn more than they could back home and the
employers get people willing to work in jobs that need to be done but no one
else is willing to do the work (let’s be honest, Singaporeans can bitch about
foreigners stealing jobs but they’ll suddenly discover that there’s more
dignity in begging your friends for food than in waiting tables or working in a
construction site or shipyard.)
However, this
clearly isn’t the case. In between employer and employee there are plenty of
parties getting rich off the system. As mentioned before, a GM of stevedoring
company once made the point that “foreign labour is not cheap.” Employers pay
for insurance, accommodation, transport and meals and most importantly they
have to pay a protection fee known as the “foreign workers levy,” which can
amount to over a thousand dollars per worker per month. On the other hand, the
workers have to pay people like agents in order to get the jobs and that can
take several months of wages and whilst the Singapore dollar may be higher than
the home currency, let’s remember they actually have to live in Singapore for
the duration of their employment. The main parties are perpetually screwed.
Again, I have to
accept that as disgusting and screwed up as I find the system, it is what it
is. Who am I to complain when employers and employees accept it? The system has
helped put a lot of money into the economy and it has also helped rise up families
in poorer parts of the world in an honest fashion.
However, a line
has to be drawn somewhere and Covid-19 drew a pretty sharp line. Up till April
2020, Singapore was giving the world a master class in how to manage the
pandemic and then cases exploded in the dormitories. It was, what you call one
of the worst examples of exploitation. People like me mattered so the
government had some “sensible” restrictions but otherwise life continued as
normal. However, the government forgot that people like the workers actually existed
and only remembered that they existed when they started getting sick.
Providing accommodation
to manual labourers from “S**hole” places is big business. Enough to finance
the lifestyle of the well to do. So, when cases exploded, the government rushed
to pump tax payer dollars to help the dormitory owners make the dormitories fit
for human habitation or at least less likely to cause the spread of a dangerous
airborne disease.
A year later,
we found that despite pumping tax payer dollars to bring the dormitories up to
standard, the same issue broke a year later. Workers were forced to sleep
outside their dormitories because they were terrified of getting Covid and the
situation reached a point where the Straits Times reported that the riot police
(the guys who travel in red metal vehicles) had to be on standby when the dormitory
operator and employer had to “address concerns.” My blog entry of the issue can
be found at:
http://beautifullyincoherent.blogspot.com/2021/10/crazily-entertaining-creepy-aholes.html
This is where
Mr. Hossain comes in. He allegedly wrote and complained about this situation
even though he was not living in the dormitory in question. The Ministry is taking
issue with the fact that Mr. Hossain gave the impression that the military were
called into contain the workers. While the military wasn’t called in, how exactly
does one expect people not to form this impression when you see a group of
these guys?
Mr. Hossain has
been accused inflaming emotions among other workers. How exactly did he do it? His
crime was to suggests that conditions in the dormitories had the potential to
cause disease. Now, the key issue here should not be on whether Mr. Hossain is
shooting his mouth of or whether he’s Tweeting his fingers off. The key issue
is whether people believe him or not and in this cause it’s the guys staying in
dormitories.
Now, if the
dormitories were places that didn’t cause diseases, chances are, most of the
guys staying there wouldn’t entertain Mr. Hossain. So, here’s the question,
what exactly is the ministry and dormitory operating business afraid of.
Well, I can’t
answer that question but I can surmise that the Minister of Manpower, Mr. Tan
See Leng is terrified of getting Covid when he steps into a dormitory. Despite making
a song and dance about how much has been done for workers including vaccinating
them, Mr. Tan will not step into a worker’s dormitory without being dressed
from head to toe in a hazmat suite:
I’ve blogged
about this before and the blog entry and can be found at:
https://beautifullyincoherent.blogspot.com/2021/10/hey-bro-f-you-bro.html
Singapore is a
wonderfully safe and peaceful place. I like it to be that way. However, it
cannot remain like that forever if we persist in stepping harder on the
downtrodden when they tell you that there are limits to how much crap they can
take.
Mr. Hossain is
not a revolutionary or an activist. He is merely trying to tell us that there
are limits that he and other workers can take. We need to listen to guys like
him. They do the crap that makes our life pleasant. We are at the same time not
obliged to support the likes of the Centurion Corporation, the largest
dormitory operator with ruling party grass roots members on the board and owner
of the Westlite Tukang dormitory, who saw a 198 percent increase in after tax
profits in the 12 months ending 31 December 2021:
https://centurion.listedcompany.com/newsroom/20220224_224459_OU8_Z3XFVMG496FMSYGX.1.pdf
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