Weeks after two of his roommates were diagnosed with COVID-19, Mohamad Arif Hassan says he’s still waiting to be tested for the coronavirus.
Quarantined in his room in a sprawling foreign workers’ dormitory that has emerged as Singapore’s biggest viral cluster, Arif says he isn’t too worried because neither he nor his eight other roommates have any symptoms.
Still, the 28-year-old Bangladeshi construction worker couldn’t be blamed if he were more than just a bit concerned.
Infections in Singapore, an affluent Southeast Asian city-state of fewer than 6 million people, have jumped more than a hundredfold in two months — from 226 in mid-March to more than 23,800.
Only 20 of the infections have resulted in deaths.
About 90 per cent of Singapore’s cases are linked to crowded foreign workers’ dormitories that were a blind spot in the government’s crisis management.
Arif’s dorm complex, which has 14,000 beds, accounts for 11 per cent of total infections, with over 2,500 cases. This massive second wave of infections caught Singapore off guard and exposed the danger of overlooking marginalized groups during a health crisis.
Despite warnings from human rights activists as early as February about the dorms’ crowded and often unsanitary living conditions, no action was taken until cases spread rampantly last month.
Singapore’s costly oversight was also an important lesson to other countries in the region with large migrant populations. Neighbouring Malaysia recently announced mandatory coronavirus testing for its more than 2 million foreign workers after dozens were diagnosed with COVID—19.
The slip-up highlighted Singapore’s treatment of its large population of low-wage foreign workers, who play an integral part in the economy but live on the fringes in conditions where social distancing is impossible.
Singapore quickly moved to contain the problem by treating the flare-up in the dorms as a separate outbreak from that in the local community, a policy that some say is discriminatory. The government shut schools and nonessential businesses island-wide on April 7.
So-called “safe distancing ambassadors” were recruited to remind people to wear masks and stay at least a meter apart from each other in public places, or face heavy penalties.
Meanwhile, all construction sites and dorms were locked down and foreign workers largely confined in their rooms. More than 10,000 foreign workers in essential services were moved to safer sites to reduce crowding, and testing was ramped up to include people with no symptoms.
Once belittled as a tiny red dot on the global map, Singapore has relied on overseas workers to build infrastructure and help power its growth into one of the world’s wealthiest nations. Some 1.4 million foreign workers live in the city-state, accounting for 38 per cent of its workforce.
At least two thirds are low-wage, transient migrants from across Asia performing blue-collar jobs that locals shun, with many working in construction, shipping, maintenance or as maids. Roughly 250,000 of the migrants live in 43 privately run dormitories mostly tucked away in the outskirts far from Singapore’s stunning skyscrapers and luxury malls.
Workers sleep in bunk beds in rooms usually packed with 12 people, sometimes up to 20, with a required minimum living space of 4.5 square meters (48 square feet) per person. Another 120,000 migrant labourers live in factory-converted hostels or temporary facilities at work sites, where conditions are sometimes even more dismal.
Although cases continue to rise among foreign workers, they have declined in the local community. The government plans to gradually reopen the economy on Tuesday before island-wide restrictions end June 1, eager to show that it has remedied the situation and that the measures have worked.
