[ad_1]
IN In recent weeks, Singapore has grown from being a global success story in its response to the coronavirus outbreak to having the highest number of cases in Southeast Asia.
There are some 15,000 confirmed cases in Singapore as of this week, more than Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia.
However, the most surprising thing is the number of infections of migrant workers in the country, which dwarfs that of the general population. For example, of the 528 new cases detected Tuesday, 511 were foreign workers who lived in dormitories, while another seven were workers who lived outside dormitories.
Singapore’s approach to disease mitigation, broadly speaking, reflects the country’s focus on almost everything: control, surveillance and containment.
But the rising Covid-19 infection rates among migrant workers suggest that there is another side to the tight regulation that governs almost every aspect of life in Singapore: institutionalized neglect of the country’s more than 300,000 migrant workers.
And this neglect is what, my research suggests, is at the heart of explanations for Singapore’s Covid-19 crisis.
Narrow rooms with a bathroom for 80 men.
In 2014-15, I conducted a large study of transitional migrant workers from India and Bangladesh in Singapore, interviewing about 200 men over 18 months. Most worked in the construction and shipping industries, and some in the landscaping and cleaning sectors.
In addition to uncovering stories of routine labor exploitation and debt bondage among workers, I also found that the living conditions of most workers were surprisingly poor.
Employers are supposed to provide meals to migrant workers, for example, but workers complained that the food was often nothing more than soggy rice and sauce. Often it was in poor condition and was not edible.
My research also found that poor accommodation greatly aggravated the difficulties these workers faced.
Many migrant workers live in the narrow, specially designed dormitories (PBDs) featured in media reports in recent days.
These dormitories only became common a couple of years ago when migrant rights organizations began to focus on workers’ living conditions. The government’s response was to build large dormitories in remote and peripheral areas.
This allowed the government to claim that it had addressed criticism of the homes of poor workers. At the same time, he ensured that these workers were more separated spatially and socially from the rest of Singapore’s population.
This separation has been a constant government concern since the so-called “Little India Riots” of 2013, which erupted after a migrant worker was shot down and killed by a bus. More than 50 policemen and eight civilians were injured, and dozens of Indian workers were charged with crimes or sent home.
But not all, or even most, of the workers live in dormitories. Many live on the top floors of small construction outsourcing companies, or in shipping containers and other temporary housing on job sites.
Conditions are abhorrent: narrow rooms that hold up to 30 men each, with no air conditioning or adequate ventilation, bedbugs and roaches, and often just a dirty toilet shared by more than 80 people.
In both bedrooms and in these accommodations, two men often rotate on one bed. When the day shift worker returns to the sleeping room, he takes the place of the night shift worker using the same bed.
Under these conditions, dengue and other waterborne diseases thrive. A few weeks before arriving in Singapore in 2012, there was a massive outbreak of dengue among migrant workers in the industrial northwest. Many men became infected and most were quickly deported.
In 2015, I visited a factory where five Bangladeshi men were looking for an unpaid salary case against their employer. I was told that previous workers had contracted dengue and were deported while still sick. As a result, their boss pushed them to work longer hours, even though they were not paid. The deportation of sick and injured workers is a common occurrence in Singapore.
These living and working conditions explain why we are seeing such high rates of Covid-19 infections now. The main government response has been to build several large dormitories for workers, but beyond that, it still has to take comprehensive measures to improve conditions.
The government has a system of wage and injury claims for migrant workers, but NGOs in the country say that, like policies to improve workers’ living conditions, it is woefully inadequate.
Workers are now very afraid of Covid-19
Last week, one of my research participants, a 32-year-old Bangladeshi man named Monir, sent me an email saying “
“We are locked up for two months. I cannot leave Singapore very dangerous now. But we are lucky not to stay in the workers’ bedroom. We sleep Geylang [a district of Singapore] company store. “
During the current crisis, dormitory workers are currently only allowed to leave their rooms at certain times to reduce contact with others. Some have been relocated to floating offshore accommodation where they are similarly confined.
Debbie Fordyce, a longtime advocate for migrant workers’ rights, told me;
“When students returning to Singapore were taking a two-week vacation in five-star hotels instead of being a possible source of infection for their family, these men are being grouped with much greater vulnerability than if they were in a space alone or with fewer people. “
The government should have been better prepared for a possible outbreak among these workers. Instead, he turned a blind eye to her needs.
When the government issued face masks for all Singaporeans at the first sign of Covid-19 in early February, migrant workers were excluded. (The philanthropic arm of a state investor later distributed more than 1 million masks to migrant and domestic workers.)
Last week, the government imposed a stay-at-home order for 180,000 migrant workers in the construction industry until May 4, confining them to their bedrooms. Defense groups have warned of the quarantine of large groups of people together like this, comparing it to cruise ships.
While recent media coverage of the Covid-19 crisis in Singapore has exposed poor conditions for migrant workers, my study shows that there is a longer history of institutionalized neglect of these men.
This is not an exceptional time for these workers: their rights have long been ignored because they are transitory and, for the most part, are considered disposable.
Read the article here:
This is why Singapore’s coronavirus cases are growing: a look at the appalling living conditions of migrant workers
[ad_2]
