Ungrateful Bastards

 

One of my Linkedin contacts managed to get a clip of a conversation with Ms. Kirstin Han and someone who was a little indignant that Mr. Zakir Hossain, the Bangladeshi worker whose work permit that the Ministry of Manpower chose not to renew. Mr. Hossain’s “crime” in this instance was the fact that he had the audacity to express views that were less than complimentary about his situation.

 

While people are entitled to their opinions, the views expressed in this conversation confirm my statement in the last blog posting that the problem with Mr. Zakir Hossain was the fact that his words only “could have” incited a riot instead “actually caused” a riot. As argued previously, whilst I generally disagree with violence, our inability to think accept the fact that people like Bangladeshi and Indian workers have the right to human emotions places us in a position where we are begging for a revolution.

I grew up as an ethnic minority in the UK and to be fair to Singapore and Singaporeans, you’ll find that the “majority” in any given country tends to have the attitude that the “minority” owes the majority for being gracious enough to let them live side-by-side. It’s a case of, you’re alive and doing well here rather than dying in wherever you came from.

Now, to be fair, I get that. It’s like being a guest at someone’s house. You have to be a good guest and do what you can to make sure your host in comfortable. Hence, when in the decade that I lived in the UK, Chinese New Year was inevitably what I celebrated in private (calls to relatives) and dinner with family but it was never more than that. I had no right to demand a day off school because, well Chinese New Year isn’t a public holiday in the UK and I had no right to demand that it was.

As a guest, you need to communicate in the language of the land you live in. I learnt German because my family lived in Germany for a while (stepdad was a senior executive in a large ad agency and so we lived in Germany on expat terms). While my German isn’t great, whenever I visit Germany, I communicate in German outside my mother’s place. When I go shopping in Germany, it never occurs to me to ask people to speak English because, I’m in Germany.

So, I get that minorities should be grateful for the life they lead and they should fit in with the mainstream and to keep certain things to the private sphere rather than insist that it becomes part of the public domain.

If you look enough ethnic minority communities around the world, you’ll find that they are actually are grateful to the host country. I’ve argued that people from “s**hole” countries are the best people to have in a country because whatever you offer them is inevitably better than what they had.

I know, I live with a Vietnamese woman who thinks of Singapore as paradise on earth. My better half doesn’t understand my interest in keeping my tax bill low. As far as she is concerned, we should pay more taxes to the “best government” around. I have another Linkedin contact, who is born British and became Singaporean. He tells a story of how he went to see our national football team and found he was the only one wearing a “Lions Shirt” whereas all the native-born Singaporeans preferred to wear English Premier League jerseys.

If you look at our migrant workers, you’ll find that they are grateful for their lot in life. Every dollar they earn here is 40 to 60 times more than what they’d earn at home. As one of my Pinoy colleagues pointed out – a maid here earns more than an engineer at home. Migrant workers do put up with far more than the native-born because its better than the alternative.

However, just as guest should show some gratitude to their host, it also important that host exhibit some hospitality. In the case of migrant labour, there is an obligation on the host not to screw the guest over and in the case of our migrant labour, the point of screwing is quite obvious.

Sure, construction workers from India or Bangladesh are happy to work the jobs that we won’t do because its better than what they left. They generally don’t complain about accommodation because a roof over the head is better than non at all. However, when you place them in a situation where they are at risk of getting a nasty disease and you confine them to that space, you are actually screwing them over. You are not doing them a favour.

If you look at what Mr. Hossain was “complaining” about, it was specific instances. He lived in Singapore for 19 years and while he did comment on the conditions of migrant workers, there was nothing to suggest that he was telling the workers to rise up in arms. Think of Mr. Hossain’s writings as more like “feedback.” I take my own example. I lived in the UK. As a “guest” I had no right to make demands on British society but as a user of certain services like the train service, I had every right to provide feedback for something I was paying for.

Again, we need to look at specific instance that got Mr. Hossain kicked out of the country and that relates to the incident at the Westlite Tukang dormitory where the riot squad was to be called in. He is accused of “inflaming” emotions in a situation where the workers should have been emotional.

What exactly do we expect migrant workers to be grateful for? Do we expect them to be grateful for their jobs? Let’s be honest here, they are grateful for the jobs we provide but they are not jobs that we would do ourselves. They are here because we brought them here and we have an obligation to ensure that they can live here under reasonable conditions. While we may not want to do their jobs, we should not expect them to live in a place where we would only enter if we covered in a hazmat suite. Would you thank someone for the privilege of living in place where they would only enter in a hazmat suite?