Singapore has just won something it doesn’t want to win. It
has become the country in Southeast Asia with the greatest number of Covid-19
cases thanks to a record spike of 1,426 cases on 20 April 2020. Singapore had been
lauded as a model of how to manage the pandemic. The government implemented
contact tracing policies and somehow, our numbers remained relatively low without
a full lockdown. Then things changed. In the last two weeks, we’ve seen our
numbers jump. From two-digit daily increases, we started seeing daily increases
of three digits on a daily basis.
What happened? How did Singapore’s thus far “Gold Standard”
management suddenly collapse? For me, I don’t think it’s a case of the
Singapore government’s lack of capability in crisis management. Rather, it’s a case
of the neglected part of Singapore coming to bite us back.
If you look at the dramatic rise in the number of infected
cases, you will note that its primarily from the foreign worker population who
are concentrated in foreign worker dormitories. As mentioned in a previous
posting, these workers are primarily from South Asia, working in labour intensive
industries and for the most part live in a different, more brutal reality from
the rest of us. A second cousin once removed said it best in an article in the Washington
Post:
Whatever is said of how the government has managed the pandemic,
I’m inclined to agree with Professor Donald Low of the Hong Kong University of
Science and Technology, who argued that the one area in which the government
should be blamed in the area of foreign worker management. Professor Low’s analysis
of the government’s handling of the pandemic can be found at:
Professor Low rightly distinguishes between “known Unknowns”
and “Unknown Known.” Everything about the virus was based on “known unknowns,”
in as much decisions were based on available information at the time and the
decision makers had to do with what they had.
The issue of foreign worker dormitories is however, is a “unknown
known.” This is an old issue and NGO’s such as TWC2 have raised this issue
before in the public domain. This is not the first time that foreign workers
have died from diseases due to unhygienic living conditions as a 2012 article
from the Straits Times reveals:
The system as they say, is stacked against the foreign
worker and employers do have the right to view foreign workers as an exploitable
asset. Getting medical leave, for example, can be perilous for the worker’s
economic well being as the list from TWC2’s website points out:
There is no possible way that the government could not have
been aware of this potential time bomb. One can only attribute the lack of serious
action in this area to “self-interest.” These workers are the ones who keep
strategic industries like ship building and construction running. Hence, the
government has not been willing to “raise costs” for employers.
The more worrying trend, is that the population,
particularly among the older Chinese are inclined to think of our dark-skinned workers
(the proverbial “darkies”) as dispensable too. The Chinese daily, Lianhe Zaobao
published a forum letter from a reader that blamed the migrant workers for the
current situation:
While Singaporeans have come out, calling out this writer
for obvious racist attitudes, the frightening thing is that plenty of people
seemed to agree. The following article from Rice Media provides some valuable
insight into what the letter reveals about society:
The Law Minister, Mr. K Shanmugam has gone public to decry
the underlying racist attitudes, but as welcome as having a high-profile
minister cone out to state the obvious, this sounds like rushing into the ICU for
a problem that was diagnosed a decade ago.
Singapore’s mortality rate from the virus remains relatively
low. While the government has done a relatively competent job, in as much as it
has taken care of the population that votes. However, it has completely disregarded
a segment of the population which does not have a voice.
A government that is renowned for having superb foresight has
been caught by a glaring blind spot. This is an organization that holds a lot of
power. It could have tried to listen to the voiceless. As a society we need to
understand that treating people like humans is in our self-interest.
Too much energy is focused on international window dressing.
In the early days of this pandemic, our ministers became prone to comparing our
well-disciplined machinery to the “idiots” in Hong Kong, which up to that point
was racked with street protests. Just as Singapore recorded its first four digit
increase in cases; Hong Kong recorded its first day without a new case. As
Professor Donald Low argued, humility and humanity should be the lessons we
learn from this virus.
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