Saw the story of how Mr. Uddin MD Sharif, a Bangladeshi worker
and writer is facing deportation amidst unfair dismissal amidst harassment
claims, despite assurances from the powers that be that he could stay in
Singapore. The story can be found at:
Well, while
there’s no way one can deny that Singapore has got it right in so many aspects,
there is one crucial aspect, which marks us out as a “failed” society – that is
the inability of the system to treat people as people. This can be seen most
visibly when it comes to two particular groups.
One group is
our elderly. We brag about how we are an “Asian” society that respects the elderly.
However, that’s not quite true. The only “old” person that got any form of
dignity was Lee Kuan Yew. The late Mr. Lee was such a force to be reckoned even
in his twilight years that one could say that he soaked up whatever good will
we may have had for people over a certain age that we became unable to respect
anyone else over a certain age. We are, for a society that claims to respect
our elders, quite happy to ensure that the frailest grandma around is
inevitably the person doing the heavy lifting, whilst the young, strong and fit
sit around and plan and strategize, which often a code for mental masturbation.
The second group
that we seem unable to recognise as human is anyone who happens to have the misfortune
of being darker than pink and happens to work in a “menial” job. If you look
closely enough, you’ll see that anyone doing the actual work on a construction
site, a ship yard or a restaurant, inevitably comes from anywhere except
Singapore. These are the guys who do all the jobs that we would never do or
accept our children doing. When we want to get our kids to study hard, we warn
them – “Study hard or you will end up sweeping the streets,” and the
implication is you will be no better in life than a Bangladeshi. If you head into any particular organisation,
you’ll find that it’s the dark-skinned South Asian doing most of the brutal
labour and getting the least. Whenever you point that out, the reply is
inevitably “It’s a lot compare to where they come from.” Yes, sure it’s a lot compared
to their home country but it’s the point is that these guys have to live and
they’re not living in their home country – they are living here.
Contrary to
what the late Michael Jackson used to say, it actually matters if you are black
or white. Never believe anyone when they tell you that age is just a number. If
you look at the way we treat our elderly and South Asian labourers, age is actually
a demarcation of what you deserve and the difference in being black or white is
inevitably about how much you deserve to be paid.
Let’s remember
that we are officially a “meritocracy,” where things like age and pigmentation are
not supposed to matter. Yet, despite this glaringly obvious point, people seem
to accept it as a fact of life. Let’s put it this way, the real problem with
Mr. Uddin is not that he was unfairly treated. The real problem is that he was
unfairly treated and said so. In our system, the “darkies” of South Asia are
supposed to be grateful for whatever shit they get.
This is not
about being “liberal” or “conservative.” It’s about being human. The “Darkies”
are here to do a job. To anyone who thinks they should be grateful for the
scraps we feed, just understand that its not like we were doing the job and
then out of the goodness of our hearts we gave the jobs to them and did
something else. The fact of the matter is, our people won’t do anything that
looks remotely menial. Whenever there was talk of going to the warehouse, the
Padwan who is a healthy 28-year-old, would inevitably find that he had too much
course work to handle. I’ve asked long term unemployed people to help out and
the Bistrot and they’ll inevitably have something on and then ask you to top up
their bus card.
So, let’s
understand that the “Darkies” are not taking jobs from us. We are not offering
them a blessing. We are hiring them because they are an important component of our
relatively decent way of life. Let’s get the understanding that they’re willing
to put up with certain hardships. So, in return, let’s accept that they should
be treated fairly. Making sure they live in places where we’ll only enter without
a hazmat suite is part of the bargain. If we want to keep our social contract
going, its time we ensure that our part of the bargain is being kept.
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