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It’s been 34 days since Singapore went into semi-closure, with most workplaces, retail stores, and schools closed.
On April 7, the government imposed what it called a “circuit breaker” to reduce the spread of the coronavirus that causes the Covid-19 disease that is ravaging the world.
The rules of social estrangement and isolation prohibit people from socializing with someone outside their home; and frowning at anyone who goes out except for essential work, getting food, or exercising.
Most Singaporeans have done their best to comply with the rules. Slowly but surely, we are getting used to a new way of life.
The human brain is so malleable, and our memory is so short that it becomes more difficult to visualize life beyond this severe cycle of working from home, cooking and eating at home, relaxing at home, sleeping at home, and waking up the next day. to repeat the cycle – for those lucky enough to have a job to do at home.
It is an unusual existence.
This will also happen, eventually, but with human memory being what it is, while in this Paused way of life, it might be good to think about what living in the midst of a great pandemic is teaching us and thinking about what we might want to do. differently when this is over.
Here is an aspect of what I am learning.
SHARING
After Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat announced in Parliament that all Singaporeans would get a Solidarity Payment increase to $ 600, some netizens began a campaign to get people who didn’t need the money to donate it to others. In a matter of hours, the campaign gained traction. Looking, I felt that this was really an act of solidarity: giving away a state bond that one does not need, to those who need it the most.
The experience of experiencing a major trauma like Covid-19 increases our sense of solidarity. Diseases are a great leveler. Being vulnerable to illness together and suffering common problems reminds us of our shared humanity.
At Covid-19, we are in this together.
That sense of solidarity has fueled a surprising variety of grassroots initiatives. So many people in Singapore are eager to do something useful for others, big or small: buy masks to give away, sew masks, turn factories into plants to make masks, cook food, deliver food, pack hand sanitizer to give away, buy groceries for kids. elders, donate groceries to those in need, help street vendors connect to obtain customers, and so on.
We are beginning to develop a stronger social conscience and learn to share what we have.
This means not giving in to our natural instinct to take care of only ourselves and our family, and thinking about how others will be affected if we manage only by ourselves. This means, for example, refusing to stockpile food, toilet paper, masks, or other critical supplies that everyone else needs.
Because we are in a public health emergency, we understand that it is a matter of life and death not to accumulate masks or personal protective equipment, so we buy and store enough for ourselves, but not in excess.
I hope that we carry that sense of solidarity with us out of the Covid-19 crisis and integrate it into our daily lives. Then life here will be much more pleasant.
Imagine if solidarity means that people stop trying to cut their tails to get by; Imagine how much less stressful our road will be if drivers make way for each other, and when you signal that you need to go into your lane to make a crucial turn at the next intersection, the car behind you slows down.
Imagine how much less stressful the school will be if people stop competing with each other for the last available place for school or enrollment space; And students never hide key reference texts in other rows of the library so they can only be found in the future.
NOT EQUALITY BUT DIGNITY
Solidarity has also brought us more in tune with the situation of migrant workers, whose crowded dormitories are now the scene of a massive outbreak of the virus.
Many of them work in construction, traveling in trucks where they sit together, too close for social estrangement, from their bedrooms to different workplaces at construction sites around the island. This means that a small group of infection at one site can quickly pick up and spread in bedrooms, and move to other workplaces.
Many workers also go to Mustafa, a 24-hour department store popular with South Asian shoppers, which was an early-infection group.
Inside the bedrooms, crowded sleeping places and the use of common spaces for eating, going to the bathroom and recreation, make them natural places for viral spread. It is the same reason that nursing homes worldwide are susceptible to Covid-19.
With dorms too busy for significant social distancing to occur, tens of thousands of foreign workers are moving into alternative housing in vacant Housing Board blocks, vacant army camps, and quickly installed shelters in convention centers. Once the occupation is reduced, the remaining workers can continue living in the dormitories while observing the rules of social distancing.
Some activist and advocacy groups have long complained about the poor living conditions of these workers. With Covid-19 infections spreading rapidly among this segment of the population, there is now much promise for improving their living and living conditions.
Standards must be raised, but to what levels? Give these migrant workers accommodation next to the bunks of our national military? Give them HDB floors to live in? Hosting them, like now, in resorts, hotel-style accommodations, cruises?
But this ignores the reality that life is uneven. Not everyone lives in a Sentosa Cove bungalow with a private pool that you can still swim in during the switch period (public pools, as well as those in private condo complexes, are closed).
Solidarity with others does not necessarily extend to inviting them to enter and share their home or room.
Rather than assuming false equality for all, solidarity requires that we maintain a certain standard of decency and dignity to which we believe everyone in Singapore should be entitled.
And then we back that commitment with the resources to make it happen.
For example, we can say that migrant workers in Singapore should have the right to housing in accordance with the International Labor Organization standard. Then we make sure the bedrooms are built to those specifications, such as having “one toilet, one sink, and one bath or shower for every six people.” The guidelines of the Urban Redevelopment Authority now stipulate a set of sanitary facilities for 15 dormitory residents.
We can also say that solidarity means that we aspire to a standard of living where no Singaporean should be without refuge; and no child here should go hungry.
These are easy statements to write, but bold goals to aim for, which will require a great deal of political will, resources, and coordination and determination to achieve it.
And yet, increasingly, I think we should either do this or suffer the consequences.
The current crisis has exposed the weak point of society in Singapore, just as it is doing around the world. In fact, in many parts of the world, the problems caused by Covid-19 are more serious. Millions of migrant workers around the world are left without wages, food or shelter as workplaces close and employers are unable or unwilling to help, and government aid is distant or non-existent. Few countries are doing what Singapore is doing: providing housing and food, promising their wages, and providing free health care, Wi-Fi, and prepaid SIM cards.
When it comes to responding during this crisis, I think Singaporeans have many reasons to be proud that we are doing our best.
At the same time, however, some of our weaknesses as a society are being exposed.
The ugly parts we are prone to hide out of sight: migrant workers in dorms far from our living spaces, poor families in rental block enclaves, rough sleepers huddled up at night in alleys in areas Central business long after the workers are gone, they remain open to our gaze and that of the world.
In this public health crisis, we can no longer ignore them, because their poor living conditions make them vulnerable to disease, and their health affects us all, because the disease does not care about nationality, state or race, because we are all in together
Covid-19 makes it clear that those who live among us (work permit holders, work pass holders, permanent residents, or citizens) are part of us.
Covid-19 is a global crisis; so many societies are going through similar episodes of soul searching. Each one will have to find their own solution.
For our part, Singaporeans have to overcome our denial of poverty and suffering in our midst and open our eyes to what is being exposed.
It is easy to put all the blame on the Government, or on the workers themselves, but this outsourcing is immature.
Much better to accept the most vulnerable part of Singapore society as ours, and then take disciplinary and methodical steps to fix things. How? For starters, targeting living standards that offer dignity: safe havens for all, including migrant workers, and doing everything possible to ensure that no child goes hungry.
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