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SINGAPORE – As the Covid-19 pandemic devastated the world and forced borders to close, 14 journalism students who in normal times would have traveled abroad for a reporting module set their sights on migrant workers in their country.
They visited dormitories that were once quarantine sites, spoke with workers who were minutes away from flying back to their home countries, and discovered stories of the lives of the men locked up.
The students were participating in Go-Far (Going Overseas for Advanced Reporting), a journalism module from the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at NTU.
Go-Far is supported by the Wee Kim Wee Legacy Fund.
The team members were Joel Chan, Osmond Chia, Eunice Chua, Jonathan Chew, Nicole Fong, Natasha Ganesan, Mandy Lee, Alvin Lim, Olyvia Lim, Matthew Loh, Tan Nai Lun, Tiffany Tan, Cornelius Tang, and Yong Jun Yuan.
Moving Forward in a Crisis: How Migrant Workers Assumed Leadership Roles During Covid-19
It is nearly dawn when 28-year-old Bangladeshi worker Billal Khan completes his 11-hour night shift on the MRT tracks, installs noise barriers along viaducts and returns to his factory-converted dormitory.
But your work is not done. At 11 a.m. M., The main supervisor of the site logs on to the Facebook page that he created: Foreign workers abroad in Singapore. Then he reads the news and looks for articles that have been translated into Bengali to decide which one to share with his 5,000+ followers. Some days he has to translate the news himself.
The page, created in April, keeps workers updated on the pandemic and Covid-19 initiatives, such as where they can get free recharge cards.
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Veteran migrant workers: Singapore is a land of opportunity
When Rahim Islam first arrived in Singapore in 1999, there were only two MRT lines: the North-South and East-West lines.
After 19 years, he left his single mother and two sisters in a rented house in Dhaka for a job that would earn him $ 600 a month as a construction worker. The plan was to return home in five years.
Now, 21 years later, he works as a security coordinator and earns $ 4,000. He has three properties and a lot at home.
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Keeps property clean, via Singapore circuit breaker
April 26 was to be a day of rest. An initiative of the Public Hygiene Council, it was to be CleanSG day, when Singapore would run out of cleaners across the country to raise awareness about garbage on farms.
But residents were mandated to stay home that day, and city hall cleaners like 23-year-old Shamol Sarker went to work as usual.
This was the result of the Covid-19 circuit breaker, when most of Singapore came to a standstill and only a handful of essential workers – those providing food, transportation, health and social services – were able to physically go to work.
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From Bricks to Books: Spend Up to $ 70K on Education Here to Boost Your Career
In a bedroom in Tuas that he shares with 14 other men, 25-year-old Ashraf Rahaman sits on his bunk and listens attentively to his teacher explain theories of statistics and dynamics.
The scaffolding supervisor attends his first online class to obtain a diploma in mechanical engineering from Singapore Polytechnic.
His internet connection is unstable and the transmission cuts out from time to time, but setbacks don’t dampen his enthusiasm.
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Staying Connected: TikTok Video App Gives Migrant Workers a Means to Stay Connected for Support
For 10 seconds, a phone camera shakily sweeps through a scene of meandering lines of masked workers waiting to collect free cell phone recharge cards in the Woodlands Dormitory parking lot.
In the background, a man’s voice can be heard saying in Hindi: “Look at the Singapore government. Because the workers are unemployed due to the lockdown, (it) has provided them with free data SIM cards.”
The video by 30-year-old North Indian security technician Kumar Ravi has racked up more than a million views on video-sharing platform TikTok since it was posted in early April, when the lockdown of bedrooms led to the migrant workers to be quarantined in their room for months.
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Change or go bankrupt: Amid restrictions, businesses serving migrant workers must adapt
Behind shelves of hardware equipment and construction tools are hidden posters containing images of the Statue of Liberty, the Sydney Opera House and the Singapore Zoo.
In May, Mohammed Shahadat Hossain, 48, turned his former travel agency and photo studio on Desker Road into a hardware store, after Covid-19 crippled the travel industry, hitting his customer base, mainly migrant workers.
About 323,000 migrant workers living in the dormitories were locked up to curb the spread of Covid-19.
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Masks, mats and more
Up to thousands of volunteers joined grassroots initiatives in April to help when dormitories closed, providing workers with everything from masks to prayer mats.
But many groups are not sure they can sustain their efforts, due to dwindling donations and fewer volunteers. Others have found solutions such as applying for grants or becoming a social enterprise.
Existing NGOs that have worked more closely with each other said they hope to collaborate more with the government to find long-term solutions for workers.
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