Thursday, June 23, 2022

Do We Really Need a Revolution?

 

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

 


 I have only one issue with Mr. Hossain. My issue is the fact that his writings merely “could have incited” instead of “actually incited” a riot. Don’t get me wrong, I am a proud Singaporean and for all my complaints about things, I love the fact that Singapore is a wonderfully safe and orderly place.

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?

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/westlite-jalan-tukang-dormitory-migrant-workers-mom-2242011

 


 Copyright Channel NewsAsia

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:

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/community/beds-set-aside-for-foreign-workers-recovering-from-covid-19-more-than-97-of

 


 Copyright – The Straits Times

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

 


 If we cannot understand this basic concept, then a revolution may be what we need to wake us up from our slumber.

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Maira Gall