APRIL 26 ― Three hundred thousand foreign “workers” ― usually men between the ages of 18-50 ― live and work in Singapore. 

Employed under work permits, they are paid some of the lowest wages in Singapore and engage typically in construction- and maintenance-related jobs.  

Most of these workers come from Bangladesh and India but there are workers from China and some other South-east Asian countries as well.  

This labour force is largely isolated from the general population. They live in large dormitories, some housing as many as 20,000 people, on the fringes of the island. 

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These crowded dormitories have now become the epicentre of Singapore’s Covid-19 outbreak, accounting for over 90 per cent of the active cases in the country and thousands of new infections.  

Why has the outbreak been so severe among this segment of the population? 

Because of our total failure to consider the conditions and situation of these workers when the outbreak began. 

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The workers, who sometimes sleep more than 20 to a room, were overlooked as we concentrated on the local population. 

No attention was paid to these people who on account of their cramped living conditions were arguably the most vulnerable segment in the country, until major outbreaks were reported from dormitories.  

Even Turkey and Bangladesh secured their refugee camps early in the outbreak ― not out of compassion ― but because they realised that cramped conditions were a danger. 

In Singapore, nobody seemed to have thought of it. The workers went entirely unnoticed. 

But that is how it has always been. These men are invisible. Irrelevant. Even now the efforts being made to draw attention to the plight of workers by the media are typically condescending. 

People willing to donate a couple of Milo packets are lionised as heroes. These are certainly kind things to do but they shouldn’t be exceptional but that is the nature of the problem. Treating these men with ordinary decency and concern is seen as an extraordinary act. 

That is the extent to which our society has allowed them to be set apart. 

Though they share our island home, they are so distant and inferior; their lives and families and hopes just don’t matter.  

When news outlets report on infection figures, we get two sets, one for cases in the community and a second for work permit holders. They just aren’t part of the community. 

People talk about majority privilege, but every segment of Singapore society is complicit in the neglect of these individuals. 

Very few of us can say we are innocent. We have treated them as second-class to such an extent that when infection among them ends up impacting our whole nation’s ability to reopen, we can only blame ourselves and ask ourselves where we went wrong. 

I think deep down most of us know the answer. We have made the distance between us and them enormous. Yet the boundary is entirely fabricated. 

The ancestors of the overwhelming majority of Singaporeans came from poor Third World countries. I know my ancestors came here to work. Few if any of our predecessors arrived as lords or ended up overstaying after a pleasure cruise. 

The truth is many of our forefathers came to Singapore to do a range of very menial jobs. Samsui women, dock workers, labourers, security guards etc. 

Please let us not delude ourselves. While today we cling to our red passports and position ourselves as a sort of South-east Asian elite, we are one of the most working-class societies in the world.

That is nothing to be ashamed of. We should be proud of our how our ancestors came to this country and worked hard to make better lives and a better country for themselves. 

But why do we struggle to empathise with people doing exactly what our ancestors did? The workers ― we either despise or refuse to see them ― have come from poor countries to endure tough living conditions in order to make better lives for themselves. 

What’s amazing is not how different they are from us but how much they are like us. Perhaps that is the problem. 

Now that so many of us are part of a privileged globalised world, we don’t want to see where we came from.  

We need to be better. 

*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.