The Singapore Government, which was praised as the gold
standard in managing the coronavirus has been struggling to show that it has
grip on things. The dramatic spike in cases of coronavirus has come from the
one area that was simply ignored – in the areas that were housing Singapore’s
vast number of foreign workers.
In fairness to the Singapore Government, it has scrambled to
take care of this sudden nightmare, offering to house and feed the workers. Unfortunately,
this has placed the government in the cross hairs of two conflicting groups. The
first group is the group that thinks the government is doing too much for the
foreign workers and pampering them. The other thinks that the government is making
a royal hash of things. This conflict is best exemplified by the recent outcry
over the provision of meals to the workers, which can be found at:
The outcry over meals provided to the foreign workers has
gotten the Minister of State for National Development and Manpower, Mr. Zaqy
Mohammad (as a matter of full disclosure, I know Mr. Zaqy on a personal basis
and once organized a training session for his grassroots leaders), trying to
explain the logistical issues in providing food for over 200,000 workers. The
story can be found at:
Reading these stories makes me ask, “What exactly is the
problem that we have when it comes to dealing with dark skinned people from
poor countries?” Singapore is a wonderfully efficient and comfortable society
in so many ways. I remember a young Englishman who is married to one of my favourite
reporters from the BBC Asian Business report, telling me that his life is
actually pretty good. He pointed out that Singapore, while small, is in the
centre of so many things and unlike England, you actually start dealing with
things at a national and international level as opposed to having to go through
counties and so on.
Unfortunately, its very different when you it comes to
dealing with the guys working at the bottom of the proverbial heap. This isn’t
the first time when our society has had problems coping with the idea that
people from third world countries doing menial jobs are entitled to the same things
like food and rest like the rest of us.
Think of the time when the government had to step and mandate
that domestic workers get one day a week off all the way back in 2012:
Apparently, giving a maid a day off was a challenge for some
people, who reasoned that if they allowed their maids to have a day off, they would
end up in “bad company:”
Now that the maids have a day off, the visible sight of maids
and dare I say, construction workers “chilling out” in public places like parks
offends the sensibilities of our local population:
The most prominent example of how the sight of poor people
having a good time offending our local population came from my favorite young
pork guzzling on a Ramdan day Muslim Politician from Pasir Ris GRC, who once exclaimed,
“The workers are terrible, they have sex with maids.” I had to explain to him
that workers and maids had urges too and just as nobody complained about his
sex life, there was no reason why he should complain about the sex lives of
workers and maids. I’m glad to report that a spell at university in Australia
has helped him understand the human perspective and the fact that idea that
workers in menial jobs are also humans is not a leftist conspiracy.
Seriously, why is it so difficult for us to understand that
construction workers and maids are human beings too and worthy of basics like having
a day out to chill and being fed a decent meal after a hard day of work? It’s
that simple. I cannot stress enough times that nobody is asking for “special
treatment.” Let’s note that with the exception of the 201s strike by bus drivers
from China (which was a justified protest against race based pay), none of our
foreign workers have actively protested and demanded higher wages (though they
have protested not being paid for work done, which, contrary to what a few members
of our local population may think – is not a strange thing to protest.)
If we can get around the idea that people from third world
countries are as human as we are, we may solve a lot more issues. If for
example, we understood that cramming a group of grown men into a small room,
after working 12 to 15 hours a day in the hot sun paying $10 per person per day
for the bed space was not an acceptable way of housing people, we wouldn’t to
quarantine them and have the logistical issue of feeding them.
Again, nobody is asking to be pampered. Nobody is asking for
extra comforts. They are just asking for some basic rest and nourishing meal
after a hard day of work. Letting them have these simple things in our
self-interest as it allows them to work more energetically and productively for
us.
No comments
Post a Comment