Zakir Hossain Khokan has enough.
It’s been weeks since he was last allowed to leave the room he stores with 11 other people.
The room is empty, with the exception of six metal-framed bunk beds. Clothes and towel hang in front of the beds, providing a privacy appearance.
“Day and night, we’re an internal room,” he says. “In fact, it tortures our minds. It’s like a prison.
“Then we can’t go away socially because there’s no room. “
Having caught Covid-19, recovered and returned to work, Zakir thought his worst days were him. His bedroom was declared virus-free in June.
But last month, a new organization developed in the bedroom and, like thousands of migrant workers, sent it back to quarantine.
Once praised for containing the virus, Singapore’s good luck collapsed when the virus reached its many dormitories of foreign workers, which activists say must have been noticed a mile away.
Months later, Singapore reported single-digit cases in the local community: People are returning to work, cinemas have reopened, and laughter can be heard coming out of restaurants again.
But many of Singapore’s lowest sources of income remain domestic in the face of uncertainty.
Singapore saw its first cases of viruses imported at the end of January; weeks later, he had more than a hundred cases.
An extensive tactile study program has been initiated and a national application of coronavirus studies has been implemented. Public warnings have been higher and obviously communicated. Harvard epidemiologists have called Singapore’s formula “the gold of near-perfect detection. “
Why Singapore has turned to virus detection technology
How Singapore has stayed at the forefront of the virus
But there is a crisis, invisible to the fullest of the population.
Singapore has more than 300,000 low-wage foreign employees from countries such as India and Bangladesh, working mainly in sectors such as structure and manufacturing.
Your right to live in Singapore is related to your paintings and your employer will have to provide you with housing at a cost. They come and go from their bedrooms in full vans to the courtyards where they paint and take breaks with men from other crowded bedrooms. in the best situations for the virus to spread.
In the absence of legal regulations of maximum occupancy, in the pre-Covid era, it was general up to 20 men the percentage of a room in a bedroom.
In late March, the migrant rights organization Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2) warned that “the threat of a new group within this organization remains undeniable. “
Weeks after a partial national closure, the scenario of the citizens under control, the predictions of the activists were fulfilled, every day hundreds of new instances of migrant staff are discovered.
Since mid-April, the government has published two separate figures: instances within the local network and instances in dormitories.
Statistics show the stark contrast between the most instances in the bedrooms and the number of instances in the community, which are so low that they are slightly recorded in the graph below.
“Covid-19, like any pandemic, is a pandemic of inequality,” Mohan Dutta, a professor of communication at Massey University, told the BBC.
“How we like the concept of bringing two other figures to Singapore . . . [these] make inequality even more apparent. One can even go so far as to say that this is [an example of]” the other. “”
The government has said the bedrooms deserve to be closed.
Approximately 10,000 healthy migrant workers in one need were taken to some other home, a small staff to manage the country.
Cases of viruses in Singapore among migrant workers
Migrant ‘in fear’ in Singapore’s dormitories
But most were trapped in the dormitories, some were not even allowed to leave their rooms while mass tests were carried out, infected personnel were removed, remote and treated.
It is a noticeably different delight from the lockout that crossed the rest of the country, with legal purchases, promotion of daily training and each and every type of outlet they delivered home. These other people were locked up, they were only given basic food.
“Once the lock was in place, we were not allowed to leave the room. We were also not allowed to pass through the next door,” Vaithyanathan Raja of southern India told the BBC.
The turn of the occasions has forced many Singaporeans to face the life situations of many of these migrant employees: sudden attention, along with new hygiene measures, has noticed a wave of charitable collections and many dormitory operators are trying to situations.
Mahalingam Vetriselvan, a 51-year-old Indian worker, said the amenities in his bedroom were correct, but that the well-filled bunk beds have now been replaced by single beds, placed “remotely. “
Another foreign employee sent photos of the remodeling of his bedroom and said the number of beds had increased from 15 to eight.
Another employee told the BBC that he was lucky enough to be transferred to a hotel through his employer.
But this is not the case with Zakir, who comes from Bangladesh and works as an assignment coordinator in construction.
After being hospitalized with Covid-19, he recovered from the previous transitory accommodation even though everything was taken back to his bedroom.
“I left the bedroom on April 17th and when I came back on July 9th, I had no improvement,” he said.
According to Zakir, his room, which measures between 6 and 7 meters, is shared with up to 12 men.
“They say we walk away socially, but for us it’s a joke,” Zakir said.
“How can we have a remote area in the small room?
Each floor houses 15 of those rooms, or up to 180 men, assuming the room is completely full. The percentage is a bathroom, with six sinks, showers, toilets and urinals, Zakir says.
Government regulations stipulate that there are 15 beds for toilet, shower and sink.
“They ask us to stay clean, but there is no soap in the soap dispenser,” Zakir said.
The BBC contacted the bedroom operator for comment, but got a response.
According to Dipa Swaminathan, founder of the migrant rights organization Its Raining Raincoats, these have long been the norm for many workers.
“The things we’re talking about now – your bedrooms, your food – those things have been around for years,” he told BBC News.
“The explanation for why we don’t hear it is because they’re not the type to complain. They have a deep sense of gratitude for what they have here [in Singapore]. If they feel a level of tension, they have reached a breaking point. “. “
There are dark stories about the tension the pandemic has exerted on workers. There have been several reports of suicide, death or self-harm.
A video that circulated widely, which may simply not be independently verified, showed an employee’s condition in front of what gave the impression of being the windowsill of a bedroom window, before being dragged through his roommates.
“I see other people in my bedroom, they call their families and they say they can’t stand the situation,” said Zakir, who runs an arrangement for migrant workers.
“They cry and say they go home. “
Wage disorders also contribute to some of this intellectual stress, and families at home depend on workers’ wages.
“We can’t send cash because we can’t pass out,” Zakir said, adding that some others didn’t get the same salaries.
The Ministry of Labour told the BBC that all foreign staff who paint full-time will have to get their current salary, but for those who cannot paint, it would be “unrealistic to impose a uniform requirement on all employers. “
Instead, employers “commit and agree to each other. . in terms of appropriate wages. “
Since then, Singapore has pledged to create additional situations for migrant staff: the government says that until the end of 2020, each resident will offer a living room of at least 6 square meters, according to the requirements according to established requirements.
Each room can accommodate a maximum of 10 beds, all of which must be separated by at least 1 m.
The question now is how the stage can be so bad in dormitories when, as Professor Dutta said, “many organizations have already reported basic disorders before the pandemic. “
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong admitted that the government’s reaction to the risk of dormitories is “not without failure,” but that “community life in any form presents risks. “
“We have intensified the precautions. For a while, they seemed appropriate. But then larger groups broke out in the dormitories, which threatened to overwhelm us,” he said in a speech to parliament earlier this month, shortly after winning an election. where the migrant factor is only a minor topic of discussion.
While he admitted that mistakes had been made, he ended up saying, “In the fog of war, it is not always possible to make the best decisions. “
Last month, the government said that everyone living in dormitories had recovered or been tested for Covid-19.
But a few weeks later, new groups of viruses gave the impression of returning to a handful of dormitories.
Zakir doesn’t know when he’ll be released. His greatest hope now, he says, is to be able to go back to paintings and make things go well for migrant staff in Singapore.
“Many of us have spent a lot of time here. For me, I’ve been here 17 years, it’s like we’re already part of Singapore,” he said.
“We are asking that we be treated as citizens. Treat us as treating a human being, as if we were a component of society. If it could be, it would be very good. “
Additional reports via Krithiika Kannan, graphics through South Asian Visual Journalism
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