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As I see it | Singapore’s migrant workers deserve better than to be ferried like livestock
- The pandemic has served as a wake-up call to the level of dignity, or lack thereof, accorded to Singapore’s guest workers
- Now that the government has vowed to improve their living conditions, it should also ban employers from transporting workers on the back of cargo vehicles
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I had mixed feelings when I pored over Bloomberg’s latest Covid-19 Resilience Ranking released this week.
On one hand, it was good to see my home country Singapore fare well in the index, which uses a wide range of data – from freedom of movement, number of fatalities and the rate of vaccination – to judge which places are handling the pandemic most effectively.
Singapore, in a nod to its stellar vaccination roll-out, pipped New Zealand to claim the top spot this month.
Bloomberg’s headline on the latest result read: “Singapore is now the world’s best place to be during Covid”. I cringed at that hyperbolic statement, wondering if the city state’s army of migrant workers thought the same.
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There is no doubt that the global health crisis has served as a wake-up call of sorts to the level of dignity, or lack thereof, that is accorded to Singapore’s guest workers.
After last year’s debacle of mass Covid-19 infections among foreign workers living in cramped – at times, squalid – dormitories, the government swiftly unveiled plans to reduce the density of these residences.
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New complexes are being built, and older ones are set to be upgraded.
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