The ignorant rich boy

The government has isolated 3 foreign worker dormitories when 131 of them were tested positive for the Covid 19 virus. More than 20,000 foreign workers were not allowed to leave the premises, advised to stay in their room and not being allowed to mingle with residents of another floor. The Straits Times reported unsanitary and densely congested conditions in the dormitories infested with cockroaches, garbage piling up and urinals overflowing.  It is estimated that 200,000 of our migrant workers stay in dormitories that house 12 to 20 men in a room. Low wage workers make up one sixth of our 5.7 m population. According to one resident 12 men share one room and all 14 rooms share one toilet.

"The notion of safe distancing in the room itself is laughable. All the distancing (they) do outside the rooms would not make much difference," said the Transient Workers Count Too NGO.

If you have watched the film "Parasites" you were never forget the scene of the storm. Reading the news about the migrant workers makes me feel like the little rich boy in the show spending a night in a tent pitched in the sprawling lawn of his home with his parents watching over him inside the luxurious house. The contrasting scene was the bursting of the sewers which flooded the basement homes bringing chaos to the underclass family of the show.

"Manpower Minister Josephine Teo acknowledged that it was crucial to raise standards at worker dormitories, but pointed out that employers were worried about the costs of housing migrant labour and if end consumers would accept that these costs had to be passed on"

That is why I feel like the child in the film "parasite" always protected by the parents at the expense of others, not knowing what lies beneath the seemingly clinically clean, efficient and sophisticated surface. Why must remuneration in money and kind always be kept so low for those who do the most for us? Maybe it's time for the government to listen more to the activists.

Meanwhile try these 2 websites to wash away some guilt and shame.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f-8Oo_JoBAGlGayAk4k9UZ4bOYFvXUZ7ChhZaAQOef4/htmlview?fbclid=IwAR1EMvmmu3MHpGiROiXHVwcCFvjJ_F99O0T9b9qMAvVd_SULiv7HrofEqa8#

https://www.home.org.sg/donate