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Zakir Hossain Khokan has almost had enough.
It has been weeks since she was last allowed out of the room she shares with 11 other people.
The room is empty, except for six metal frame bunk beds. Clothes and a few towels hang in front of the beds, providing an appearance of privacy.
“Day and night, we are inside a room,” he says. “It’s actually torturing our minds. It’s like jail.”
“So we cannot distance ourselves socially because there is no space.”
Having caught Covid-19, recovered and returned to work, Zakir thought that his worst days were behind him. His bedroom was declared virus free in June.
But last month a new group developed in the bedroom and, like thousands of migrant workers, it was ordered to re-quarantine.
Once lauded for containing the virus, Singapore’s success collapsed when the virus reached its many foreign worker dormitories – something activists say should have been seen coming from a mile away.
Now, months later, Singapore reports single-figure daily cases in the local community. People are returning to work, cinemas have reopened and laughter is heard again in restaurants.
But many of Singapore’s lowest-income people remain indoors, facing uncertainty.
The men who built the city
Singapore saw its first cases of imported viruses in late January; weeks later, she had more than 100 cases.
A huge contact tracing program was started and a national coronavirus tracing app was implemented. Public warnings were increased and clearly communicated. Harvard epidemiologists called the Singapore system the “gold standard of near perfect detection.”
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But there was a crisis that was not seen by the majority of the population.
Singapore is home to more than 300,000 low-wage foreign workers from countries like India and Bangladesh, working primarily in industries such as construction and manufacturing.
Your right to live in Singapore is linked to your job and your employer must provide accommodation, at a cost. They travel from their dormitories in crowded vans to construction sites where they work and take breaks alongside men in other crowded dormitories – perfect conditions for the virus to spread.
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Singapore’s foreign workers often work in labor-intensive industries
Without legal maximum occupancy rules, in pre-Covid times it was normal for up to 20 men to share a room in a dorm.
In late March, the migrant rights group Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2) warned that “the risk of a new group in this group remains undeniable.”
Weeks after a partial national shutdown largely controlled the situation among the general public, the activists’ predictions came true. Hundreds of new cases of migrant workers are discovered every day.
Since mid-April, the government has released two different daily figures: cases among the local community and cases in bedrooms.
The statistics show the stark contrast between the high number of cases in the dormitories and the number of cases in the community, which are so low that they are barely recorded in the graph below.
“Covid-19, like any other pandemic, is a pandemic of inequality,” Mohan Dutta, a professor of communication at Massey University, told the BBC.
“How we communicate it, like the idea of reporting two different numbers in Singapore … [these] make the inequalities even more apparent. You could even say that it is [an example of] ‘otherness’ “.
Locked in
The authorities decided that the bedrooms should be closed.
Around 10,000 healthy migrant workers in essential services were transferred to other accommodation, a basic staff to keep the country running.
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But most were trapped in the bedrooms, some were not even allowed to leave their rooms, while the massive tests were being carried out. The infected workers were removed, isolated and gradually treated.
It was a markedly different experience from the blockade the rest of the country was going through, with purchases allowed, daily exercise encouraged, and all kinds of outlets offering delivery. These people were well and truly locked up, and they only delivered basic meals.
“Once the lock was in place, we were not allowed to leave the room. We were not allowed to go next door as well,” Vaithyanathan Raja from South India told the BBC.
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A typical curry meal provided to a migrant worker
The turn of events forced many in Singapore to grapple with the living conditions of many of these migrant workers: the sudden attention, coupled with new hygiene measures, led to increased charitable collections and many dormitory operators working to improve the conditions.
Mahalingam Vetriselvan, a 51-year-old worker from India, says the facilities in his bedroom were fine, but now the cramped bunks have been replaced by single beds, placed “a good distance away.”
Another foreign worker sent similar photos of his dorm reorganization and said the number of beds had increased from 15 to eight.
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A migrant worker said his beds were changed from two floors (L) to a single bed (R)
Another worker told the BBC that he was lucky that his employer transferred him to a hotel.
But this was not the case for Zakir, who comes from Bangladesh and works as a construction project coordinator.
After being hospitalized with Covid-19, he recovered in temporary accommodation before finally being taken back to his bedroom.
“I came out of the dorm on April 17, and when I came back on July 9, I didn’t see any improvement,” he said.
According to Zakir, her room, which measures around 6 x 7 meters, is shared by up to 12 men.
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Image of a shared bedroom
“They say we should distance ourselves socially, but to us, that’s a joke,” Zakir said.
“How do we have room for distance within the small room?”
Each floor houses 15 such rooms, or up to 180 men, assuming each room is completely full. They share a bathroom, with six sinks, shower stalls, toilets and urinals, Zakir says.
Government guidelines state that there should be 15 beds per toilet, shower, and sink.
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This is the half of the bathroom shared by up to 180 men.
“They ask us to keep clean, but inside the soap dispenser there is no soap,” Zakir said.
The BBC has contacted the dormitory operator for comment, but has received no response.
According to Dipa Swaminathan, founder of the migrant rights group Its Raining Raincoats, these conditions have long been the norm for many workers.
“The things that we’re talking about now – their bedrooms, their food – these things have been around for years,” he told BBC News.
“The reason we don’t find out is because they’re not the type to complain. They have a deep sense of gratitude for what they have here. [in Singapore]. If they feel any level of stress, they have really reached a breaking point. “
There are grim stories about the strain the pandemic has placed on workers. There were several reports of suicide attempts, deaths, or self-harm.
A widely circulated video, which could not be independently verified, showed a worker standing on what appeared to be a bedroom window sill, before being stopped by his roommates.
“I see some people in my bedroom, they call their family and say they can’t accept the situation,” said Zakir, who runs a charity for migrant workers.
“They cry and say they want to go home.”
Wage problems also contribute to some of this mental stress, and families in the home depend on workers’ wages.
“We cannot send money because we cannot go out,” said Zakir, adding that others have not been paid their usual salary.
The Ministry of Manpower told the BBC that all foreign workers working full time must receive their current wages, but that for those unable to work, it would be “unrealistic to impose a uniform requirement on all employers.”
Instead, employers should “mutually commit and agree to … appropriate pay arrangements.”
An autopsy
Since then, Singapore has pledged to further improve conditions for migrant workers: the government says that by the end of 2020, each resident will have a living space of at least 6 square meters per person.
Each room can be allocated a maximum of 10 beds, all of which must be separated by at least 1m.
The question now being asked is how the situation was allowed to get so bad in the bedrooms when, as Professor Dutta put it, “many organizations already pointed out basic problems before the pandemic hit.”
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has admitted that the government’s response to the bedroom threat “was not without flaws” but that “community life in any form poses risks.”
“We stepped up precautions. For a while, they seemed adequate. But then larger groups erupted in the bedrooms, threatening to overwhelm us,” he said in a speech to parliament earlier this month, shortly after winning an election in which The issue of migrants was only a minor topic of conversation.
Although he admitted that missteps were made, he ended by saying: “In the fog of war, it is not always possible to make the perfect decisions.”
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A bedroom located on the outskirts of Singapore
Last month, the government declared that all workers living in dormitories had recovered or been tested for Covid-19.
But just a few weeks later, new clusters of viruses have emerged in a handful of bedrooms again.
Zakir does not know when he will be released. His best hope now, he says, is to be able to go back to work and for things to improve for migrant workers in Singapore.
“A lot of us have spent a lot of time here. For me, I’ve been here 17 years, it’s like we’re already part of Singapore,” he said.
“We are not asking to be treated as citizens. Just treat us as you would treat a human being, as if we were part of society. If it could be that way, it would be very good.”
Additional information from Krithiika Kannan, South Asia Visual Journalism graphics
