throwawaysgx

Another example of how Singapore treat low pay foreign workers:

So in a car, you're supposed to wear your seat belt, right? It's normally a traffic offence, but not if you're transporting construction workers at the back of a truck[1]. It's perfectly fine to make them live in a room with 12 other workers, with limited toilet and kitchen capacity. It's fine to ignore them when COVID-19 hit, until it's no longer possible to do so[2]. Singapore is built by the workers, and they're considered disposable by the system.

[1] https://citiesofmigration.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/IMG_...

[2] https://www.arabnews.com/node/1655741/world

Just because both sides agree to something doesn't make it right. A century ago child labor is considered ok in western countries, now we can look back and agree it was a horrible thing.

You cannot compare a job fair to what was happening in those malls. Imagine you're not coming to a job fair, but you stay in a dorm room with 20 other women, and every day you sit in a room waiting for someone to come. Some agencies make the workers to stand in line in front of the "showroom" for any potential employers to walk pass. It makes me feel like they were selling goods and not a person.

I edited my comment to make it clearer.

Pre-COVID, you can visit a shopping mall and select your maid from a pool of selection. The whole experience is bizarre and inhuman and I don’t quite understand how many of my friends do it.

Throwaway because I have a business in Singapore and I don't want to associate this comment with it.

It's an open secret that Singapore rely heavily on cheap labors from overseas for many jobs that Singaporeans are refusing to do: construction works, live in maids, hawker centers cleaning (some old Singaporeans do do this though).

In many household it's common to have 1, or in some of my friends' home, 2 live in maids to help with chore. They get paid around 400-600 SGD (250-400 USD) per month depends on where they are from, how fluent they are in English and are expected to work at least 5 days a week. The employer keeps their passports, and can pretty much send the maid back to their country immediately. This imbalance relationship feels very wrong to me, but most people here don't care.

Because the pay is low, the quality and ethic of some domestic helpers are not great. Some do steal and sabotage their employers when they're not happy, I've heard many horror stories over the year. On the other hand, many employers don't see them as equal, or even human. A quick google will show you both side of the story, and for all the good things Singapore have to offer, low-pay workers' right is virtually non-existent and as long as Singapore benefit from it, I don't think it will change anytime soon.

Edit: Something I forgot to include: employers do provide a room and meals for the maids, so their expenses in Singapore is minimal if they want to, and in many cases they send most of their salary back home.