Keeping foreign workers ‘out-of-sight’ and ‘out-of-mind’ is not a ‘sustainable’ solution for an inclusive city, so why do we keep kidding ourselves?
In 2008, when the Serangoon Gardens housing saga peaked, I was asked, by an Internet TV reporter, if I could propose a ‘sustainable model for a self-contained township’. I was quite perplexed – mostly by the assumption that segregation via self-containment was a ‘sustainable’ solution, much less the solution.
Today, I read that some residents may have ‘overreacted’ to the dormitory being built in their midst. [See here.] This is because concerns have been unfounded – the foreign workers have been mostly ‘out of sight’. In response to resident’s concerns, “the dormitory was fenced up and the exit to Serangoon Gardens estate was sealed. A 400m slip road, which cost $2 million, was also built to allow vehicles direct access to the dormitory from the Central Expressway”. It also seems that workers living in the dormitory “had been told by the dormitory operator not to loiter around the estate”.
The latter part of the article addresses some workers’ complaints: about the long trek to the dorm entrance and living conditions, which are bare and cramped.
At this point, a siren begins to blare in my head. “Would you like it if the government built a foreign worker dormitory just next to where you live?” I imagine a cohort of disgruntled residents pointing their fingers at me, demanding an answer – no ifs or buts, or ‘depends on X, Y, Z’…YES OR NO? Answer me!
And because it is generally assumed that most Singaporeans would, in all honesty, object, this seems to seal the discussion. “You see? You are just as prejudiced as I am, so how dare you criticize us and belittle our concerns?”
So the debate reaches a state of paralysis, and the eventual ‘compromise’ of a dormitory with a changed ethnic and gender make-up, smaller number of workers, sealed exits and rules for residents, is hailed as a ‘successful’ way of managing the grassroots outcry.
But as I read through articles from 2008 about the issue, I find old questions resurfacing. Like this one, posed by Lydia Lim, a correspondent from The Straits Times:
We as a society need to ask ourselves if that is an acceptable way to treat fellow human beings.
Why do we feel we have a right to deny foreign workers the good things we ourselves enjoy, including a chance to walk about freely and mingle with others?
Imagine if you or your son or daughter were to go to another country to work and be at the receiving end of such treatment. How would you feel?
Such questions have not been debated and answered with sufficient reflection and depth. Far from ‘overreaction’, I feel that as a community, we have under-reacted to what Serangoon Gardens presented.
It was an opportunity to address the underlying racism and prejudice that bubbled under comments about increased crime, the safety of women folk in the area, the danger of ‘riots’ and the ‘dirtiness’ of foreign workers, often ascribed to being a cultural attribute of theirs by virtue of being from a ‘Third World country’.
It was an opportunity to address a key and pressing issue: the shortage of suitable housing for foreign workers in Singapore, despite exponential increases in their population. In 2006, there were a reported 580,000 low-wage foreign workers;[1] as of December 2009, the number of work permit holders had risen to 856,000[2] – this averages out to an increase of approximately 92,000 new low-wage foreign workers each year over three years. Imagine, an average of 7666 new foreign workers arriving each month to a high-density city state where housing problems are already causing the local population, particularly those in low and middle-income groups, to cry out in aggravation. Where did the authorities, employers, industry spokespersons, recruitment agents think all these men and women were going to rest their heads at the end of a long day’s work?
It was an opportunity to demand greater accountability – why were such plans not made public until after key decisions were already made? Why was that particular site chosen in the first place?
I don’t really believe any of those issues were truly addressed.
The ‘solution’ was to allay residents concerns by diminishing workers’ convenience and mobility. By adjusting the numbers of workers and which ‘sectors’ they are from, the government was also, in not so many ways, assuring residents that there will be less men, and less men from ethnic populations they were not so comfortable with.
Success, it then seems, is measured by just how ‘non-disruptive’ life continues to be for residents – how the presence of foreign workers is not seen, heard or felt.
Invisibility. It appears that this is the most successful way for low-income foreign workers to ‘integrate’.
How realistic is this? In a city where 78 percent of the 1.1 million non-resident workforce is made up of foreign workers?[3] (No, not the ‘wealthy’ and ‘highly educated’ foreign talent the government is spending millions to socialize, but the poorly remunerated ones who lay our MRT tracks, clean our public toilets, prune the trees along expressways, build our casinos, sweep our estates).
How is it that, on the one hand, we agree that foreign workers are needed for the jobs local Singaporeans do not wish to perform or are unable to fill, yet are so cavalier about the real, everyday needs of a significant and growing population in our midst?
And what does it indicate about us, as a society, when we unthinkingly accept that the best way to accept people we are fearful of is to control, segregate and keep them ‘out of sight’.
I have lived in Perth, Western Australia, for the last six years. It is a popular destination for Singaporeans, many of whom have either relocated or bought property there. I detect Singaporean accents in local supermarkets and eating places, and also at my university.
While I have since moved back to Singapore, I was still an international student in Australia when the Serangoon Gardens saga broke out in 2008. Like Lydia Lim, I have often wondered too, how Singaporeans would respond if the Australian government determined that, because of the ways in which Singaporeans do not ‘acculturate’ themselves to the Australian way of life – because they cook dishes that ‘smell funny’, artificially inflate property prices, complain too much about unextended shopping hours, offend locals by buying up shared public spaces to build condominiums etc. – they will only be allowed to live (and shop and invest) in designated remote areas and are warned not to enter or exit freely to common spaces shared with other Australians.
So, no, I will not sign a petition to oust a foreign worker dormitory if one was earmarked to be built in my residential area. I would much rather sign a petition to stop any more natural spaces from being stripped away to build a new shopping mall.
I am protective of my living space and I want it to be safe, comfortable, and as uncongested as possible. I do not associate foreign workers with such problems – I have, in my years living abroad, encountered Singaporeans who can be extremely shoddy in housekeeping and cleanliness. These are attributes which are not monopolized by any one race or cultural group. If there are incidents that are disruptive and distressing to me, as a resident, I will make the necessary complaints – this will happen no matter who moves next door.
Congestion is a frustrating problem in a land-scarce city. I am equally dismayed by the sense of claustrophobia I get with the building frenzy this nation has gotten itself into. The idea of any building development housing a few thousand persons coming up right next to where I live fills me with dread.
But it is another thing to allow our general displeasure with ‘infrastructural problems’ to legitimize generating further hardships for a population in Singapore that is already marginalized. We can campaign for better, more inclusive urban planning sensitive to the needs of a diverse population, rather than encourage segregation and oppressive regulations in a panic.
It is, in simple terms, a matter of treating ‘Others’ as we ourselves wish to be treated – with respect and some empathy.
For those who are complaining that even local Singaporeans are not accorded respect and empathy, well, you’ve just identified another problem.
Stephanie Chok
[1] Brenda Yeoh, “Singapore: Hungry for Foreign Workers at All Skill Levels”, Migration Information Source, January 2007, http://www.migrationinformation.org/Profiles/display.cfm?ID=570.
[2] Francis Chan, “Foreign worker levy to increase over 3 years”, The Straits Times, 23 February 2010.
[3] This calculation is based on December 2009 figures compiled from the following Straits Times articles: Cassandra Chew, “Employers want more foreign workers”, The Straits Times, 9 December 2009; Francis Chan, “Foreign worker levy to increase over 3 years”, The Straits Times, 23 February 2010.
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TOC’s earlier video of the area in question:
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At this point, a siren begins to blare in my head. “Would you like it if the government built a foreign worker dormitory just next to where you live?” I imagine a cohort of disgruntled residents pointing their fingers at me, demanding an answer – no ifs or buts
…………………………………………..
leekuanyew would not even ALLOWED RICHED singapooriums to live beside him in oxley rise..that he had both end CLOSED and guarded by gurhkas..
what else you all wants to says?
Stephanie Chok,
It is always hunky dory when the shit doesn’t happen to you. The litmus test would be your reaction if a foreign workers’ dorm is built next to your home.
The govt may take special precaution at the outset because they want to “prove” that there “no problem”, but I guarantee you that over time such measures will become more laxed……and before you know it, the situation would have gotten worse.
I like that the article mentions the responsibility on part of authority and agents when they first bring foreign workers into our country.
But seriously, I think the issue is not have them invisible but for programs to share with them the cultural differences that exist. Most of them have never been here nor know much about how singaporeans feel about personal space and general dislikes, so you can’t blame them for behaving in their usual comfortable social norms.
It seems now that the trend now is the plea for singaporeans to ‘tolerate’ and ‘get along’ with them. But this IS pertaining to a sense of entitlement; why can’t they slowly adapt instead? It’s similar to the Australia case where some singaporeans in a foreign land should stop being a$$holes and adapt to the local norms.
I agree with the article that we should not treat foreign workers as not being human beings, but the thing is, foreign workers nevertheless present a threat to social security.
The Singaporean elite are more worried about paying themselves instead of spending money to develop technological alternatives to importing cheap labour.
Pay a visit to Switzerland and you will see the difference. They have an active democracy there, so the kind of nonsense we’re having right now in Singapore doesn’t exist.
// Katana Shōjo
The pigs have a financial problem to deal with.
Our GDP:public debt is among the top 1o in the world.
shocking for a country that supposedly have surpluses year on year.
They are not going to spend monies that doesn’t increase the value of the land they sell to raise revenue.
The Singaporean elite are more worried about paying themselves instead of spending money to develop technological alternatives to importing cheap labour.
Pay a visit to Switzerland and you will see the difference. They have an active democracy there, so the kind of nonsense we’re having right now in Singapore doesn’t exist.
I am a GDP idiot. If “Our GDP:public debt is among the top 1o in the world.”, how come our minister’s pay is paid according to our GDP?
Apartheid
I am not sure the comparison with Singaporeans in Australia is valid. The Singaporeans over There are more likely to be Foreign Talents rather than Foreign Workers (I have more confidence in the Australia govt to sift through those who apply to work/study there).
If you compared Apple to Apple, the REAL (or even not so talented) foreign talents in Singapore are not walled off from the general population.
If you bring a significant mass of people who have very different standards, I think it is sometimes reasonable to segregate them. e.g a country where raping is common, are you truly comfortable with them being around your wives, sisters and so on? I recognised that it is unethical by most standards, and it is inherent unfair to judge one by how the majority in their country acts… but my answer to the above question is still ‘no’.
Australia and such, do not have such problems because jobs are designed to be attractive despite their nature. i.e Higher pay or sophisticated machinery are introduced to help. Singapore blithely continues to rely on cheap labor, and that, imo, is how this problem came about.
“foreign workers nevertheless present a threat to social security.”
“a country where raping is common, are you truly comfortable with them being around your wives, sisters and so on? ”
I think these are generalization and there are no statistics to prove that the lower skilled foreign workers have a higher crime rate or comes from a country where raping is common (which country?). The fact is most legal workers are here just to make a living and provide for their families back home and certainly not out to create troubles or problems.
We should treat our fellow human beings as that and not treat them like slaves or prisoners.
// Sawdust
//If “Our GDP:public debt is among the top 1o in the world.”, how come our minister’s pay is paid according to our GDP?
the theoretical answer is:
In principle, for them to drive the GDP growth. Imagine the debt don’t increase (because they are not paying interest, which is a simplifying assumption), the higher the growth rate, the lower the GDP:public debt ratio will become.
Another answer:
GDP seems to be big in S’pore. (even though only half of it belongs to S’poreans).
1% of a big number is a bigger number than 1% of a small number.
And the ministers preferred to be paid the 1% of the big number rather than the small number.
Tekko,
I only used ‘rape’ as an example. Might be some other crime that is prevalent in the respective countries. However, rape is common in S.Africa, though I don’t think we have too many FTs from Africa.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8107039.stm
I also qualified on what the IDEAL (on treating fellow human beings) should be, and admit that I fall short of it.
In the end, I hoped that the issue is circumvented (by redesigning jobs to make them attractive), and not necessarily ‘solved’ (so that we continue to import cheap labor) since it is hard to make everyone conform to the ideal state of being.
Let’s not take the moral high ground here. Foreign workers are from a culture radically different from ours, and their is no way they can integrate with us. I’m not saying it’s their fault or they are vile, but it’s a practical reality we need to deal with.
I put the blame squarely on agents and employers. Why are they given free reign to fly in so many foreign workers? Why is Singapore so dependent on them when other 1st-world countries can use their own citizens as labourers.
I propose foreign workers be housed in Oxley Rise, Queen Astrid Park, Leedon Park and in GCB (bungalows areas).
Reasons:
1) Huge land area – enough space to build huge dormitories to house thousands of workers.
2) Pollution – bungalows and dormitories can be spaced far apart so there is little noise/stench pollution that will affect the elites.
3) Morally correct – Ministers and policy makers must practice what they preach.
4) Efficient use of security- These areas have the highest security because they house our ministers/elites. The security will prevent crime and mischief by foreign workers.
5) Give others a break – stop dumping the dormitories in the north and west and other areas that are up to their necks with foreign workers.
6) Treat foreign workers well – Let them come back to a safe, comfortable, secure and nice place after a hard day’s work with neighbours like ministers to look after their welfare.
Please support my proposal. Thank you very much.
SafeSingapore
to begin with, this young lady Stephanie Chok don’t stay in Serangoon Gardens, so she donesn’t really understand the issue.
Imagine if you are staying near the workers dorm and now you can’t sell your house, wouldn’t you be upset?
build the workers dorm next to her house and see how she feels.
What’s the big deal? Singaporean males have been caged and isolated for the better part of 2.5 years of their lives and has to endure the same thing for 2 weeks for the next 12 – 20 years. I don’t see anyone arguing that they should be freed.
After all, at least the workers had the choice to quit but no men can yet quit NS.
The author need a good dose of being caged inside camps to have the proper perspective.
Not the author, but I lived for about two years in the heart of Little India, and recently moved back to HDB-land. As much as I might disagree with the necessity of NS, I served my time.
I also agree with the author’s points. Not living near foreign workers and not serving NS are not valid rebuttals.
“It was an opportunity to address the underlying racism and prejudice that bubbled under comments about increased crime, the safety of women folk in the area, the danger of ‘riots’ and the ‘dirtiness’ of foreign workers, often ascribed to being a cultural attribute of theirs by virtue of being from a ‘Third World country’.”
Well said. We the seemingly more powerful people tend to label powerless groups with tendencies to commit deviant and criminal acts and these labellings often comes with no/weak bases of evidence.
But I see no solution to it. If the authority is to provide them with the respect and rights like the freedom to roam around the estate, the middle-class residents would definitely display even stronger displeasures and would thus affect stability and cohesiveness around the estate. Since the foreign workers have lesser say than the residents probably due to social status/class/wealth, the authorities would definitely compromise their well-being to appease the more powerful group.
Only when there’s stratification would there be balance for society to function. So it is not possible to expect complete assimilation.