Josephine Teo is only part of the problem – making her a scapegoat is not the solution

Manpower Minister Josephine Teo has been stealing the limelight for all the wrong reasons, bearing the brunt of intense criticism over the explosion of COVID-19 cases among migrant workers. Each time she opens her mouth, she seems to incur the ire of netizens. Many have called for her resignation. But what do we have to gain by making a scapegoat out of Josephine Teo? The COVID-19 multi-ministry taskforce is after all co-chaired by Ministers Gan Kim Yong and Lawrence Wong – they were the ones who earned high praise from Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in the early days of the pandemic.They therefore have to shoulder the blame when things take a drastic turn for the worse. If we single out Josephine Teo as THE PROBLEM, we could be letting the rest off the hook. In reality, the entire team has failed the COVID-19 leadership test. What is happening to Josephine bears some similarity to the plight of Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew in 2015. The Transport Ministry then was a hot potato because the SMRT was plagued with massive breakdowns and regular service disruptions. Lui resigned one month before the 2015 general election, which the People’s Action Party (PAP) won handsomely. Lui became the fall guy. But the SMRT debacle got even worse under his successor Khaw Boon Wan who was only able to ride it out because he was much better than Lui at playing taichi and the blame game. So what difference does it make whether Josephine goes or stays? The system stays the same. Instead of making her a scapegoat, we should see her as the product of a system that produces a general turned Trade and Industry Minister who thinks that cotton comes from sheep, an electrical engineer turned Health Minister whose key COVID-19 contribution is coining the term “circuit breaker,” and a Prime Minister who is fond of casting doom and gloom, warning Singaporeans last night that we now live in a “more dangerous world,” and by implication are better off with the PAP. https://www.onlinecitizenasia.com/2020/06/08/josephine-teo-is-only-part-of-the-problem-making-her-a-scapegoat-is-not-the-solution/

Lawrence Wong wants 2 more years to address overcrowded and unhygienic dormitories, how leh?

To rise to the top in the Pay And Pay party, the only skill set you need is knowing how to suck up to Pinky; possessing proper ability to get things done is secondary.

Josephine Teo: A repeat of Lui Tuck Yew?

Is the dormitories mess-up a replay of MRT’s Saw Phaik Hwa and Lui Tuck Yew situation? Whether the answer is yes or no or even not sure, there is, unfortunately for Manpower Minister Josephine Teo, a historical precedent for an almost politically inevitable conclusion.

Former SMRT CEO Saw Phaik Hwa quit in 2011 in the face of public outcry over the state of the MRT system. To cut a long and old story short, Wikipedia summed it up this way: “Saw was accused of under-investing in maintenance of trains and tracks. This led to a culmination of train breakdowns, especially in 2015, causing delays to hundreds of thousands of commuters.” That meant the effect of her misjudgements or wrong prioritisation continued even after her resignation. That was how deep the cockup was.

Lui Tuck Yew became the Transport Minister in 2011, after having served as Second Transport Minister. I think he did his best with a rotten lemon handed him by his predecessors. Press pictures of him taking rides with suffering commuters in the packed peak-hour trains showed a determination to solve the train delays, breakdowns and overcrowded-ness. But, in the end, he gave up: “In politics, you need a tender heart and a thick skin, not a hard heart and thin skin.” There was much more to his resignation than that. We will come to this later.

The whole MRT fiasco was finally solved (I hope) after a couple of major management and structural readjustments. Struggling new CEO Desmond Kwek came and left. The technical expertise (getting people who actually know what a linear displacement variable transducer looks like) was buffed up. Targets were set. Khaw Boon Wan is still around (maybe until the next General Elections).

The big difference between the MRT and the dormitories is the train foul-up was very visible, it affected Singaporeans in real time as it took place. If not for the coronavirus, the dormitories issue would probably not have seen such daylight. The purpose-built dormitories were specifically designed to allow for socialising among the migrant workers themselves, based on feedback that these workers did not have friends or relatives in Singapore and nowhere else to go. There they were tucked away out of sight. They served their purpose.

Whether the food, hygiene and maintenance standards were always, on paper, what they were supposed to be remains to be investigated should there be an inquiry into the conduct of the operators. I will be disappointed if Parliament does not collectively demand such an inquiry.

If not for the dormitories, Singapore would likely be touted – first by a triumphant 4G-led administration and then by admirers around the world – as one of the benchmark examples of how best to deal with the virus. Instead, the Covid-19 figures, as they stood as of Saturday afternoon, were a whopping 31,000 cases, 23 deaths and 13,000 patients discharged. With stepped up tests, the daily tallies may continue to be high for a while.

The dormitories problem will, therefore, not disappear overnight, not by a long shot. According to a published record, “of Singapore’s 725,200 non-domestic migrant workers, 200,000 reside in purpose-built dormitories and 120,000 in factory-converted dormitories. The remaining workers live in temporary housing on construction sites and shipyards, and in residential premises rented on the open market”. More than the usually mentioned number of 323,000 migrant workers live on this tight island together with locals.

It must be a given that Singaporeans cannot continue to ignore the contribution that these workers have made and will make to the country. They have to allow the government to err on the side of generosity in taking better care of the migrant workers, to put things right, to do something which should have been done long ago.

We cannot insist on living a fairy tale.

My lockdown life since April 7 has consisted of, among other things, watching CNA replays in the lazy afternoons. I just caught one on Jewel Changi on Friday. The programme took a look at the “ordinary” people – the happy botanist, gardener, PR guys – who worked very hard to help bring the project to fruition. Footage of the spectacular waterfall and lush foliage in an air-con paradise of shopping, dining and picture-taking mania portrayed, perhaps, Singapore at its best. An oasis – but in a world of squalor.

What the TV show did not do was to talk to the armies of construction workers and cleaners behind the Jewel project. Indeed, transposed onto the larger picture of overlooking those who have also made everything possible, this lack of empathy for such workers has been pretty much part of a whole array of hard truths and self-denialisms which must be confronted – if Singapore is ever going to be a genuine First World society.

Imagine. Just one solitary error of judgement in handling the Covid-19 pandemic is enough to expose the flaws and weaknesses in the Singapore success story. So much time wasted and such a huge amount of resources has to be directed at containing the result of the lapse of focus. So much impact on the economy and livelihoods. And how it has shattered our international image. Covid-19 will be a make-or-break issue for the 4G leaders in the forthcoming GE.

The signs are not good for Manpower Minister Josephine Teo. I sent this note to a friend who is usually pro-establishment and in touch with their thinking: “Re Donald Liew: The minister has also offered to assist our client with his personal circumstances. – lawyer for Liew.” For those who have not been following the news, Donald Liew was one of two persons who had to apologise to the minister for wrongfully alleging corruption involving her and her husband. He was supposed also to donate $1,000 to the Migrant Workers’ Assistance Fund. He could not because of financial problems. The minister waived that demand.

I expected my friend to reply: “Good for her.” Instead I got this: “Grasping at straws.”

Does my pro-estab kaki know something I do not? Lui Tuck Yew resigned, it was speculated at that time, not because his heart was not on his job but because he did not want to be the lightning rod for anti-government votes. Honourable, indeed.

Tan Bah Bah, consulting editor of TheIndependent.Sg, is a former senior lead writer with The Straits Times. He was also managing editor of a local magazine publishing company.

Singaporean Ingrates Who Don’t Appreciate PAP Ministers, Spouses and Relatives Working Selflessly on Their Behalf for (Almost) Nothing Will Be Sued till Their Pants Drop! You Show Them Josephine!

Singaporeans are an ungrateful lot! Unlike Foreign Talents and Western media who have been singing the praises of our Indivisible and Eternal Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Goh) for the last fifty years and telling us that we have the best Government in the world (after all Lee Kuan Yew created a gleaming metropolis out of a mangrove swamp in less than 6 days-in fact in the 1920s Singapore already had the highest per capita income in Asia), some Singaporeans (at least 30% or maybe 50% if you exclude new citizens beholden to the PAP) do not seem to appreciate the huge sacrifices that our talented Ministers and their spouses and relatives who occupy the top jobs in Ministries, the Civil Service, statutory boards, agencies, MAS, Temasek, GIC and the vast network of state-owned companies that comprises up to 70% of Singapore’s economy. These churlish ingrates do not seem to appreciate how lucky they are to even have a place to live since our Government owns 70% of the land and generously permits our citizens to pay “market”(not much of a market when the state owns all the land and can set the price anywhere it wants by restricting supply) prices for a 99 year rental.

The PAP elite’s sense of entitlement was on full display in Josephine Teo’s decision yesterday to send lawyers’ letters to two ordinary Singaporeans, activist Jolovan Wham and someone called Donald Liew over his allegations that “Mrs Teo had improperly benefited herself and her family financially, as a result of her mismanagement of the dormitory infections relating to the Covid-19 pandemic, which led to the development of emergency housing facilities by infrastructure consultancy Surbana Jurong.“

At the same time Surbana issued a statement saying “These allegations are not only untrue, they are disrespectful of our colleagues who have made enormous sacrifices, including putting their health at risk, to deliver the projects under challenging conditions, for the benefit of our community.” Immediately I felt an enormous surge of gratitude towards Josephine’s hubby. Not only is he working for (almost) nothing in a very demanding role but he is risking his life on a daily basis, not sitting in an office or centrally air-conditioned landed property, putting together quarantine facilities with his bare hands to house large numbers of Covid-infected migrant workers. Never mind that his wife’s incompetence or callousness as Manpower Minister towards the living conditions of migrant workers led to a situation where the dormitories were like a vast Petri dish. Clearly he is a living saint, like US ex-President Jimmy Carter, who into his 80s worked building houses for the homeless.

I would like to nominate some of the other members of Surbana’s board for Humanitarian of the Year, in particular Yaacob Ibrahim, the ex-Minister of Communications and Information. This selfless individual has achieved much in spite of or rather because of the Covid Pandemic. In fact with the help of the virus he was able to clear a whole field of migrant workers thus pleasing his constituents and presumably ensuring his re-election.

It is no doubt technically correct that Josephine Teo played no role in the selection of her husband as the number 2 or 3 in Surbana Jurong. No doubt there is no smoking gun just as I am sure that there is nothing that directly implicates Lee Hsien Loong in the selection of his wife to be head of Temasek. However the way in which PAP ex-Ministers, their spouses and relatives are so frequently at the top of Government-owned companies or appointed to lucrative roles cannot be explained by randomness alone even if one allows for the influence of qualifications which frequently are at worst mediocre, at best average, whether one looks at Mrs Lee’s CV or Mr Teo’s. The PM and his Ministers may shout “meritocracy” to explain why they should bag all the top prizes for their families but this looks increasingly threadbare. Even the Seat Warmer-in-Waiting, Heng Swee Keat, only got a Second Class degree from Cambridge.

Furthermore these people keep their jobs seemingly regardless of performance. Ho Ching (whose salary remains a state secret which no one in the Government appears to know and which is defended by the use of POFMA even though the Government maintains Temasek is a “private” company) has kept her job through the financial crisis of 2008-09 and despite many high questionable investment decisions such as to take Olam private at a premium when the company would likely have gone bankrupt. Her job at Temasek is apparently so easy and that she can spend all day on her Facebook account apart from when she accompanies her husband on state visits. In other countries the spouse of a Minister or PM would normally have to pay their own travel expenses unless her or his presence was in the national interest.

There is an interesting parallel with the UK PM. He was reported to the Independent Office for Police Conduct by the Opposition (in Singapore there is no independent agency to report Lee Hsien Loong to since the CPIB is part of the Prime Minister’s Office and the Director reports to him) over his relationship with an American entrepreneur who received public money while he was mayor of London. On Thursday the UK Independent Office of Police Conduct decided after a long delay that Boris Johnson would not face a criminal investigation.

The Financial Times said:

The IOPC said it had found no evidence to indicate that Mr Johnson influenced the payment of any sponsorship moneys to Ms Arcuri or that he influenced or played an active part in securing her participation in trade missions. But it added: “There was evidence to suggest that those officers making decisions about sponsorship monies and attendance on trade missions thought that there was a close relationship between Mr Johnson and Ms Arcuri, and this influenced their decision-making.”

No one can doubt that employing people connected with the PAP, and in particular spouses and relatives of Ministers, is seen as a smart move even if there is no evidence the Ministers concerned directly influenced the recruitment process. Before he fell out with his brother, Lee Hsien Yang was appointed CEO of SingTel and then later Chairman of Fraser & Neave before he returned to the state sector as head of the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore.

But while recruitment of people in the private sector may be more of a private matter, even though companies should be subject to anti-discrimination legislation, it is inexcusable that state companies (which are responsible for as much as 70% of the economy) should make decisions based on people’s political connections and who they are related to.

The shameless narcissists in the PAP, including Josephine Teo truly believe that Singaporeans should pay homage to them as performing some selfless public service and sacrifice when the reality is that their hands are always out for handouts from the public purse.They even ensure that their children take a disproportionate share of Government scholarships which should go to the needy, thus putting their offspring on an accelerated path to million dollar salaries. In my view the only politician who truly sacrificed himself for Singapore was my father whom Lee Hsien Loong and his Ministers worked assiduously to bankrupt and to deny him the ability to earn a living.

Rather than show her true colours as a bully, in the mould of her mentor the PM, Josephine Teo and the other Ministers should provide evidence to demonstrate that their spouses, children and relatives truly earned their positions in Government-owned or linked companies on merit through an open recruitment process that was not influenced by who they were related to. An interesting experiment, rather like those that have been done in the US to prove discrimination, would be to enter their CVs under false names and see if they survived the initial sifting or fell by the wayside. Like the sheep in Animal Farm which set up a tremendous bleating of “Four Legs Good Two legs Bad” and later “Four Legs Good Two Legs Better” whenever anyone dared to timidly criticise the pigs, the PAP similarly shout their critics down with cries of meritocracy and threats of lawsuits. Singaporeans need to wise up before GE2020 and realise they have been played.

https://kenjeyaretnam.com/2020/05/21/singaporean-ingrates-who-dont-appreciate-pap-ministers-spouses-and-relatives-working-selflessly-on-their-behalf-for-almost-nothing-will-be-sued-till-their-pants-drop-you-show-them-josephine/

Small gas Jo Teo has sent legal letters to Jolovan Wham and Donald Liew after being accused of corruption lol:

https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/josephine-teo-sends-legal-letters-two-people-over-completely-baseless-accusations

Dorm Operator reaps huge profits, Taxpayers pay for Covid

https://hazelpoa.blogspot.com/2020/05/dorm-operator-reap-profit-taxpayers-pay.html

Centurion Corporation is a company that runs workers’ dormitories.  Their financial statements are made publicly available on the SGX website.

In FY2019, on the back of $133.3 million in revenue earned, its profit before tax was $111.0 million.

In particular, profit margins on the worker accommodation segment over the years have been a staggering 61%..

Now, taxpayers are footing the bill for the Covid-19 infections due to poor sanitary conditions arising in dormitories for the longest while. Anyone else besides me feel this is astounding and not right? Where is the accountability????

https://links.sgx.com/FileOpen/CCL-Presentation%20Slides%20on%204Q-FY2019%20results-2020%2002%2027.ashx?App=Announcement&FileID=598052

https://links.sgx.com/FileOpen/CCL-4Q-FY2019%20Results-2020%2002%2026_ENG.ashx?App=Announcement&FileID=597999

HOLY SHIT.

https://www.sammyboy.com/threads/how-the-govt-makes-obscene-profits-from-worker-dorms.285478/

I wonder just how many more cans of worms remain unopened?

A tale of two outbreaks: Singapore tackles a costly setback

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — 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 23,000, the most in Asia after China, India and Pakistan. Only 20 of the infections have resulted in deaths.

About 90% 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% 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. Neighboring 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. The misjudgment was also an embarrassment for Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s government ahead of a general election anticipated in the next few months that is expected to be the last for Lee, who has led Singapore since 2004 and is planning to retire soon.

Singapore’s nanny state government, which won global praise for its meticulous contact tracing and testing in the early stages of the crisis, 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.

In Arif’s S11 Punggol dorm — advertised as the cheapest in Singapore — police have mounted a 24-hour patrol of the 13 multicolored housing blocks located in the island’s northeast.

Arif, who was sharing a room with 11 other workers, said one of them was moved to an army camp in early April to help ease overcrowding. Shortly afterward, another roommate was hospitalized with a fever, and on April 17 another was isolated with light symptoms, with both testing positive for the coronavirus.

Arif said he hasn’t been tested yet because thousands of residents of his dorm will probably have to be tested. But he said he was comforted by Singapore’s top-notch medical facilities and its relatively low number of deaths from the virus.

He gets food delivered to his room, free Wi-Fi on his cellphone and, most importantly, he said the government has pledged that the workers’ salaries will be paid.

“I am not worried because the government is taking good care of us like Singaporeans,” said Arif, who has lived in Singapore for seven years. “Right now, we take our temperature twice a day, try to stay a meter apart from each other and constantly use hand sanitizer.”

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% of its workforce. At least two thirds are low-wage, transient migrants from across Asia performing blue-collar jobs that locals shun, such as construction, shipping and maintenance, as well as working 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.

Most of Singapore’s migrants earn between 500 and 1,000 Singapore dollars ($354-$708) a month.

Since last month, the government’s infection data has separated foreign workers’ cases from those among the general population. Although cases continue to rise among foreign workers, infections have decreased 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 measures have worked.

“The larger narrative that cannot be missed is the tale of two outbreaks in Singapore,” said Eugene Tan, law professor at Singapore Management University. “The outbreak that Singaporeans should pay attention to is the local community. The other outbreak of foreign workers is getting its due attention from the government, but it should not be one that Singaporeans should be unduly concerned about.”

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/tale-two-outbreaks-singapore-tackles-051404220.html

Tan Chuan Jin’s stupidity

Tan Chuan Jin (TCJ) needs to be publicly screamed at, shamed and even slapped for his idiotic utterances about what was published on page A4 of today’s Straits Times.

The same Tan Chuan Jin who once remarked that our elderly citizens scavenging for hours each day at public dustbins for empty drink cans to sell for a pittance were merely exercising has recently surmised that the massive outbreak of C19 cannot be attributed to bad living conditions alone.

My first reaction after reading what he has said was how could such an idiot rise to become an army general in our SAF? Something is obviously and seriously wrong with our overly worshipped book-smart system in Singapore.

Next, my instincts alerted me that he was once a Manpower Minister himself and could he be trying to pre-empt and deflect some blame and responsibility away from himself?

By now, the very sorry state of a large number of our worker dormitories have been laid bare for all to see. Dirty, unhygienic, overcrowding and cramped living environments are super conducive for diseases and viruses to breed, spread and multiply. TCJ’s idiotic utterances must never be left unchallenged by any citizen with some semblance of common sense.

They must be called out loudly and their outright stupidity exposed, no less. Think.

http://www.tremeritus.net/2020/05/09/tan-chuan-jins-tcj-stupidity/

Tan Chuan Jin is a fucking hack whose demotion to speaker of parliament was truly well-deserved.

TCJ kenna whacked by netizens for for saying dorm conditions are not solely responsible for infection clusters!

Singapore—Speaker of Parliament Tan Chuan-Jin said on Thursday (May 7) that the poor living conditions in foreign workers’ dormitories should not be seen as the sole cause of the outbreak of infection clusters in these living quarters. Instead, the spread should be attributed to the coronavirus’ highly infectious nature, as well as overcrowding in the dorms.

Mr Tan, who served as Singapore’s Minister of Manpower from 2014 to 2015, spoke to the press on the sidelines of an event for foreign workers’ dormitories, he underlined the importance of not conflating the two issues of the coronavirus pandemic and poor living conditions.

The straitstimes.com quotes him as comparing the situation of students living in university hostels. “For example, in our universities, if the hostels remained open and the students were there, you would expect a massive outbreak to occur as well. If people are living in close quarters, given the contagious nature of this virus, outbreaks will occur.”

The Speaker answered questions about the outbreak of coronavirus cases in foreign workers’ dormitories, where over 85 percent of Singapore’s infections are found. He said that poor living conditions are not the only reason, even if some dorms are “abysmal.”

However, he said that the issue is not about “white-washing” the situation, but avoiding generalising dorm conditions as a whole.

The cramped and sometimes unhygienic conditions in dormitories have become an issue in the national conversation due to the high number of infections in the dormitories. Even the quality of the workers’ meals has been in the news.

The Speaker added, “It doesn’t excuse (bad conditions), it is not acceptable and we need to take stringent action against those who violate the law – but it doesn’t represent the whole space and that’s the context that is important.

It is important to speak to the migrant workers as a whole for their lived experience to have a sense of the conditions. And given the scale and nature of this outbreak, we should not conflate the causes with these less-than-accurate generalisations.”

While he acknowledged that many aspects of dormitory living can and will be improved upon by the Government, he urged that issues at hand be dealt with first. “Let’s grapple with the (present) issues, look after our people and look after all the people who are here in Singapore who are affected in different ways,” Mr Tan said.

Many netizens took issue with Mr Tan’s points, disagreeing with what he said about the living conditions in foreign workers’ dormitories. Some netizens even recalled that Mr Tan had once said seniors collected cardboard for exercise.

More at http://theindependent.sg/netizens-push-back-at-tan-chuan-jin-for-saying-dorm-conditions-not-solely-responsible-for-infection-clusters/

Adios useless Jo!

COVID-19 safeguards in foreign worker dorms 'not sufficient', says Lawrence Wong: report

SINGAPORE — National Development Minister Lawrence Wong conceded that the safeguards against COVID-19 in foreign worker dormitories were “not sufficient”, according to a CNBC report on Wednesday (6 May), in the frankest admission yet by a Singapore leader that the government dropped the ball on the issue.

In an interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box Asia, the co-chair of the multi-ministry taskforce on the coronavirus was asked by anchor Sri Jegarajah why the government had failed to identify these dorms, which house some 400,000 men across Singapore, as a potential area of infection risk.

Wong responded by pointing out that the foreign worker clusters have occurred not just in the dormitories, but also in common work sites and gathering areas.

Jegarajah then pressed Wong, “But do you accept that conditions in those foreign worker dormitories were frankly appalling, frankly unhygienic, and this was an accident waiting to happen from a public health point of view? And if so, are those conditions going to change?”

Wong replied that the living environment in the dorms has been steadily improving over the years, stressing that the real issue was that they were designed for communal living.

Nevertheless, he said, “I think the lesson we've learnt from this experience is that with this pandemic, the unprecedented pandemic, the safeguards were not sufficient, and the design of the dormitories have to change. It cannot be designed in the same manner as it was before."

Almost 17,000 workers living in dorms infected

Wong’s comments came on the same day that the Ministry of Health (MOH) reported a preliminary 788 new COVID-19 cases in Singapore as of Wednesday noon, bringing the total to 20,198. The vast majority of the new cases are foreign workers living in dorms, said the ministry.

The government has come under fire in recent weeks for failing to take stricter measures earlier to curb the spread of the virus in dorms, a number of which had been reported by the media and non-government organisations to be in cramped and unhygienic conditions. A total of 16,998 migrant workers living in dorms have so far tested positive for COVID-19 as of Tuesday.

Speaking in Parliament on Monday, Manpower Minister Josephine Teo was asked if the authorities would apologise for the large number of coronavirus cases in the dorms. Teo responded by saying that migrant workers were more concerned with issues such as their medical care, wages and remittance.

“These are the things that they have asked of us. I have not come across one single migrant worker himself that has demanded an apology,” Teo said. 

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/covid-19-safeguards-in-foreign-worker-dorms-not-sufficient-says-lawrence-wong-report-100726695.html

Minister Josephine Teo Says No Migrant Worker Has Demanded Apology, Netizens Don’t Think They Dare To

Manpower Minister Says Workers Are Mainly Concerned About Falling Sick

When you’re unhappy at work due to boss-related issues, it’s probably unrealistic to expect an apology for less than ideal work conditions.

Unfortunately, something similar is happening to our migrant workers, but with more serious consequences. Living conditions within dormitories across the island have been placed under media scrutiny, due to an outbreak of Covid-19 involving thousands of patients.

And yet, despite being exposed to a deadly disease, it seems none of the workers have asked the authorities in Singapore to apologise to them.

NMP asks Minister if an apology would be issued to migrant workers

This issue was discussed at length in Parliament on Monday (4 May), after Manpower Minister Josephine Teo’s ministerial statement on the Covid-19 situation in Singapore.

Ms Anthea Ong – Nominated Member of Parliament – posed her a challenging question. In essence, she wished to find out if the Government was willing to apologise for “dismal conditions” and the recent Covid-19 outbreak within workers’ dorms.

In her answer, Minister Teo said this,

More at https://mustsharenews.com/josephine-teo-migrant-workers-apology