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SINGAPORE : The foreign worker community in Singapore is facing the impact of the economic downturn.
While the Manpower Ministry has said that foreign workers seeking assistance for salary arrears has remained at 0.2 per cent in the last few years, some volunteer groups helping foreign workers said they are seeing more of them coming to seek help.
With the recession deepening, volunteer groups expect more jobless foreign workers to spend even more time in cramped dormitories.
One dormitory in Tagore Lane recently saw a chicken pox outbreak, leaving one worker dead. After inspecting the area, the Health Ministry advised supervisors to provide the sick with a separate toilet, which seems to be a luxury in dormitories.
Dr Noor Abdul Rahman, chair, Direct Services, Transient Workers Count Too, said: "Very often, some of these dormitories are not properly equipped with, for example, a proper sick bay, where a sick worker can recuperate and in a better environment, and be isolated from his peers, especially if it is an infectious disease."
Transient Workers Count Too has also seen injuries sustained at workplaces going untreated.
The volunteer group cited instances where an employer would make their workers sign informal contracts, stating that S$50 will be deducted for every day of sick leave taken.
The recent case where an employer was fined for housing his foreign worker in a bin centre may be extreme. But volunteer groups said that some employers have a misconception that foreign workers live in slums back home.
Volunteer groups also said that it is common to find cockroaches and bed bugs in dormitories, making it easy for infectious diseases to spread rapidly.
Jolovan Wham, executive director, Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics, said: "I went to Bangladesh last year, and I went to a village, where in this village, many of these workers... go overseas to work. It is clean, it is hygienic, it is not cramped, it is comfortable."
Volunteer groups hope that to ensure foreign workers' welfare, the Manpower Ministry can conduct a thorough survey of the workers' living spaces islandwide.
They also hope to see closer collaboration between the Health and Manpower Ministries to reduce the spread of infectious diseases amongst foreign worker communities.
In this economic downturn, they also hope for more rigorous checks on companies' cash flow status, so that foreign workers will be paid for an honest day's work. - CNA/ms
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