Rancid US$1 curry: should Singapore swallow cost of migrant workers’ meals?

With salaries for Bangladeshi and Indian migrant workers hovering around US$500 a month, most go for the cheapest – not the healthiest – food option

If workers can’t afford to eat properly, do caterers, employers or the government have the ability – and appetite – to help?

Reading Time:7 minutes

By the time many labourers sit down to eat, their packed lunch has been left outside for hours. Photo: Olyvia Lim

Published: 1:00pm, 15 Nov 2020Updated: 3:41pm, 15 Nov 2020

A sour smell rises as Ibrahim Khalil, 31, opens his lunch, undoing the knots on two plastic bags.

The fish curry, exposed to the morning heat for half a day, has turned rancid again. Still, the curtain installation worker from Bangladesh pours it over his pile of cold rice as he sits cross-legged on the floor and begins to tuck in.

He has never complained about the stomach pain he often feels afterwards. His attitude to his meals in Singapore is simple: “My food here, I eat to live. To survive.”

His lunch, purchased from a catering company that provides him with three meals a day in return for S$110 (US$80) a month, is always the same. A single, thin slice of fish in a plastic bag of curry gravy. There is also a portion of watery dal, which ought to be fragrant and thick with lentils, tomatoes and onions. The centrepiece of his meal is the heap of long-grain ponni rice – nearly a whole kilogram of it – all of which he finishes to refuel after hours of hard work.

At S$1.20 (90 US cents) a meal, this is all that most migrant workers like Ibrahim want – a lunch that is cheap and filling.

When Covid-19 struck Singapore, its migrant workers bore the brunt. The virus spread through their crowded dormitories prompting the government to quarantine some 300,000 in their rooms for months. Migrant workers now account for around 95 per cent of the nearly 58,000 cases recorded in the country. The experience has shone a spotlight on their living conditions and prompted authorities to outline plans for improved dorms that will offer more space and better access to amenities and medical care.

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Rancid US$1 curry: should Singapore swallow cost of migrant workers’ meals?

With salaries for Bangladeshi and Indian migrant workers hovering around US$500 a month, most go for the cheapest – not the healthiest – food option If workers can’t afford to eat properly, do caterers, employers or the government have the ability – and appetite – to help?

With salaries for Bangladeshi and Indian migrant workers hovering around US$500 a month, most go for the cheapest – not the healthiest – food option

If workers can’t afford to eat properly, do caterers, employers or the government have the ability – and appetite – to help?