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SINGAPORE: With restaurants and shopping malls bustling with life, pre-pandemic life is slowly returning for the people of Singapore, except for the more than 300,000 migrant workers who make up much of the city’s low-wage workforce.
Since April, these workers have been confined to their residences with limited exceptions for work reasons. After an extensive campaign of testing and quarantine, the government cleared the dormitories where most of these Covid-19 workers live in August, allowing residents to leave for various “essential errands,” such as court appearances and medical appointments. .
The government said last month it was working to relax more rules for workers. Those plans are now under threat, with new clusters of viruses emerging in dormitories, where workers from China, India, Indonesia and elsewhere share bunk beds and cramped living spaces.
“Some days I feel very upset and I can’t bear it,” said Mohd Al Imran, a Bangladeshi worker at a local engineering company. After months of confinement in the dormitories, he got Covid-19 anyway.
He was sent to a coronavirus care center and said it was “very free” in comparison. “In the bedroom you can’t leave your room,” he said in a text message. “They treat it like a prison.”
Singapore has been saying that it is taking appropriate measures, considering that migrant workers account for almost 95% of coronavirus cases in the city. But the resurgence, so soon after the dormitories were declared Covid-free, is raising questions about whether Singapore’s conditions for its low-wage workforce undermine efforts to eradicate it.
“If there are relatively socio-economically disadvantaged people in overcrowded housing, Covid-19 transmission will occur at a higher rate,” said Peter Collignon, infectious disease physician and professor at the Australian National University School of Medicine. It is not inappropriate to treat higher risk groups differently, he added, but “it is not reasonable to place restrictions on people when there are things that can be fixed.”
While experts say it’s reasonable to cordon off specific areas to quell an outbreak, they also say conditions in bedrooms are ripe for future transmission. Ventilation is not always good, and bathrooms are shared by a dozen or more.
Government standards currently specify a minimum of 50 square feet of personal space, roughly equivalent to one-third of a parking space, conditions that “will always pose an outbreak risk,” said Raina Macintyre, professor of global biosafety at the University of New York. South Wales in Australia.
Poor and marginalized populations around the world have been the hardest hit by the global pandemic, highlighting the wide social and economic inequalities that existed long before Covid-19.
At best, Singaporean migrant workers live with more restrictions than citizens and white-collar expats; With the rise of clusters in dormitories, prolonged lockdown conditions have brought new psychological stressors, along with renewed debate about the deep dependence of the city-state on this part of the workforce.
Reports of self-harm and suicide attempts among migrant workers have circulated in local media and on Facebook.
When asked, the Singapore Ministry of Human Resources said that these tend to be isolated incidents reflecting existing underlying mental illness or problems at home. Either way, social service groups say they are overwhelmed with calls for help from workers.
The situation “has definitely deteriorated in the last two months,” said Alex Au, vice president of the local migrant aid group, Transient Workers Count Too.
“The tone of the talks has changed a lot. There’s a lot of ‘I don’t care if you don’t even get me my salary, just get me out of here.’ I want to go home.'”
With overtime, a migrant worker could earn between S $ 600 and S $ 1,000 a month, far less than the monthly cost of a typical three-bedroom apartment. Dorms still eat a chunk – for around S $ 350, a worker can get a bunk in a room shared with 12 to 16 other people.
Amenities vary. Usually there are some type of health services, such as a clinic or an infirmary, as well as recreation spaces, mini-marts and indoor and outdoor rest areas.
Is the worst over?
As of June, the government had transferred more than 32,000 workers to temporary accommodation in response to the crisis. In the longer term, it plans to build 11 new dormitories that will limit occupancy to 10 single beds per room; Toilet, bathroom and lavatory facilities will be shared by every five residents, compared to 15 today.
Enclosed spaces are ideal for the spread of a highly contagious virus like Covid-19. After officials instituted sweeping city-wide restrictions in April, the cases exploded in the bedrooms, peaking at more than 1,000 a day.
In May, with the lockdown measures still in place, Singapore had one of the largest outbreaks in the region.
The country responded with an aggressive testing strategy and, as the number of cases began to drop, the reopening process began in mid-June. The dormitory residents, though practically closed, with exceptions for those who had jobs to go to – some, but not all, city construction projects were able to start anew.
Dorm exits are monitored and before workers can go to work or run one of the authorized errands, their employer must notify the government Ministry of Manpower.
This is a trade-off that many residents are willing to make. Many are owed wages, and healthcare costs can be worse at home. Of more than 57,000 reported cases in Singapore, only 27 patients have died.
Ah Hlaing, a Burmese worker at an elderly care facility, has been serving her quarantine at a Holiday Inn since May. “I exercise in the morning, have breakfast, watch the news, watch movies,” he said. “I’m on Facebook, I have lunch, I bathe, have dinner, pray and sleep.”
However, fewer people have jobs to go to these days, eliminating the biggest reason allowed for leaving bedrooms. On an annualized basis, Singapore’s GDP fell almost 43% in the second quarter compared to the previous three months. Many construction projects are also on hold until employers can meet test and safe distancing criteria.
So they are largely confined to their compounds. “I don’t know how long they will quarantine me and I don’t have any income,” said Bob Bu, a 33-year-old Chinese citizen who worked as a restaurant manager until he lost his job in a wage dispute. with your employer.
“I was under a lot of mental pressure and couldn’t sleep for a while due to the uncomfortable environment in the bedroom.”
At the construction company Kori Holdings, Ltd, ten of the 200 migrant employees have told CEO Hooi Yu Koh that they would like to go home.
“I was able to understand the concern of workers in isolation, with family members concerned for their safety, confined to dormitories,” he said. “They just want to go home to their family and make sure the family knows that they are safe.”
As the outbreaks ebb and flow, the government has warned that the city-state will not return to pre-Covid norms anytime soon. Instead, leaders are describing a “new normal,” where crowds and large gatherings are restricted until there is a vaccine and social distancing is imposed.
For Singapore’s migrant workers, that marked the beginning of a series of safe living measures, including the mandatory use of a government contact tracing app.
Employers must also ensure that workers in dormitories, as well as those in industries such as construction, are routinely tested every 14 days.
In at least one dormitory, residents have been allowed a 30-minute visit to the premises a day; otherwise, they are expected to be in your room or at work.
“This is not the ideal situation,” said Leong Hoe Nam, an infectious disease physician at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore. But let’s see the facts. There is little or no transmission in the [broader] community. If you need the economy to move, would you free the people in the community or the workers in the dormitories? The safety of others prevails over the interest of an individual. “
