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SINGAPORE: Most of the time, M. Al Amin, a foreigner from Bangladesh, is going to paint at 7 a. m. and returns to his bedroom around 8 p. m.
Spend the remaining hours of wakefulness doing responsibilities such as washing clothes and preparing dinner. He then gets up to date with his circle of relatives at home on the phone before calling him one night.
The 27-year-old’s regime is a long way from his “independent” lifestyle in pre-pandemic times.
“Before COVID-19, we could go to the box or the box and spend our time there. But now we come back from the paintings and stay in our rooms. “
“That’s why I say that today, staying in a bedroom is like being in a criminal and feeling like a resident,” said the technician who stays in ASPRI-Westlite Papan’s bedroom in Jurong East.
For others, such as Bangladeshi companion M. Miraz (not his genuine name) who remains in Jurong Penjuru’s bedroom, it is boredom that is hard to beat.
“We can’t use the gym or go down the stairs. I can’t meet with my friends to talk. Even if there’s a lake right in front of the bedroom, you can’t even stop by to get off,” said the 29-year-old. former structure manager, who didn’t need to make his genuine call to worry about getting into trouble with his employer and the bedroom operator.
As the COVID-19 scenario progressed in Singapore, it warned that the government would allow foreign personnel into the community. The number of other people who can leave the bedrooms at any time can be staggered, he said.
Mr. Miraz might not have to wait long, as the Ministry of Labour (MOM) said that dormitory citizens will stop online in “controlled numbers” once a month in the near future.
“When a large majority of dormitory citizens recover or are vaccinated and the threat of transmission in dormitories is particularly reduced, we can further ease restrictions,” said a MOM spokesman in response to today’s questions.
Foreign staff have been more commonly confined to their bedrooms since the first bedroom organization in S11-Punggol known on March 30 last year.
At the time, the virus temporarily spread among staff living in densely populated rooms that can accommodate up to 20 other people each. At the height of the epidemic in April last year, when Singapore entered the age of breakers, more than 1,000 new cases. COVID-19 were known in dormitories.
The infection rate has forced strict restrictions on the movement of foreign workers, confining them in their rooms.
It has also activated equipment for dormitory operators in pandemic management, including providing food to staff, moving some to transit homes to lower bedroom density, and deploying mass sampling training to identify COVID-19 cases. the same structure sites or businesses in the same facilities as much as possible.
To date, the pandemic has inflamed tens of thousands of foreigners living in dormitories, and two have succumbed to complications of COVID-19.
On Friday, March 26, Singapore reported 60,265 COVID-19 infections.
In total, nearly a portion of the more than 320,000 foreign employees living in dormitories tested positive for COVID-19 in polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests or serological tests. Serological tests look for antibodies and may run into past infections in others with little or no symptoms.
However, the stage has taken a step forward in recent months: in August, all the bedrooms were declared free of the virus and the staff gradually returned to work, the last case being detected in a bedroom on February 28.
Workers can also use non-unusual amenities, such as kitchens and mini-marketers in their bedrooms during staggered hours, as long as the operator in their bedroom has earned MOM’s soft green.
Foreign staff can also stop at one of 8 recreation centers, which host services such as supermarkets and food centers, 3 times a week for 4 hours each of the stopovers, where they must book in advance through MOM’s SGWorkPass mobile app.
Despite the rest of the rules, foreigners said TODAY that they continue to feel confined to their bedrooms a year later and look forward to returning to the net as they did before COVID.
On Wednesday, the multi-departmental organization COVID-19 asked at a press conference why migrant staff are still subject to stricter measures compared to the rest of the community, even though cases have declined significantly among the population.
Education Minister Lawrence Wong, who co-considers the working group, reiterated that migrant workers’ dormitories “remain in places where a singles case can seamlessly for many other workers” due to the high-risk nature of their living and functioning environment.
“In construction, for example, despite all our efforts to have other spaces and avoid mixing workers, it is very difficult to make sure that this type of segregation exists all the time,” he said.
While they return to their lives as they knew it, their rapid desire, the long history of foreign personnel in a post-pandemic Singapore remains a topic of national conversation.
The COVID-19 outbreak in dormitories has raised doubts about Singapore’s remedy for its migrant workers, and it is widely accepted that their life situations want to improve.
Since then, the government has analyzed the factor and introduced new specifications to give residents more room to live. Specifications are tested in several transient bedrooms that have been built to reduce density in existing bedrooms.
The completed specifications will be announced by the end of this year. Designed to make bedrooms pandemic-proof and prevent a recurrence of the COVID-19 epidemic, those specifications will be incorporated into the 11 new bedrooms built for this goal that the government plans to build over the next one to two years.
While some of these adjustments bode well for workers’ beings, they will cost consumers and taxpayers, TODAY’s industry players said.
DEALING WITH STRESS AND BOREDOM
At the height of the COVID-19 epidemic in dormitories, reports emerged of migrants suffering from intellectual fitness disorders or suicide attempts due to prolonged isolation.
A year later, restrictions on dormitories had a variety of effects on their residents. While some foreign staff members said TODAY that they no longer felt as concerned as they used to, others continued to feel about being locked up with other residents.
Veeraiyan Hariprasath, a 28-year-old maintenance employee staying in the leo bedroom in Kaki Bukit, said the circuit breaker was very disturbed after learning of the deaths from COVID-19. involved in their monetary security.
However, these fears subsided in August after the bedroom epidemic subsided and the Indian citizen was able to return to work.
Mr. Hariprasath said that because his paintings forced him to tour the island, he did not feel as limited or under pressure as other foreign staff members who can only move between his rooms and paint sites.
At the other end of the spectrum M. Al Amin, who said his tension point now only “100% to 90%. “
Initially concerned about whether he would suffer from the pandemic (he did not contract the virus), he is now under pressure that he has no way of alleviating the pressures he faces at work.
“Sometimes the boss orders you or the manager yells at you. There’s so much tension and you can’t refresh your brain in the workplace,” Al Amin said.
Having to return from the paintings to a room full of 16 other people engaged in activities, such as cooking or watching a video on a speaker, means it’s hard to find a moment of peace for intellectual rejuvenation, he added.
Disputes between your roommates are also not unusual because one’s activity may annoy the other, Mr. Al Amin.
If you can move to a recreation center on rest days, you prefer not to because “everywhere (in the center) there is queue, tail, queue”, given the crowd.
Other staff said life situations had come a long way, a year after the bedroom criteria reached national scrutiny.
Mr. Miraz, who moved into Jurong Penjuru’s bedroom three months ago, said that with 16 other people sharing “a very small space,” the life scene remains the same as before COVID-19.
I used to stay at Kranji Lodge 1 where there were 12 other people in a room.
The double-decker beds in your existing room are so close to each other that they do not meet the 1 m protection distance requirement. The room is also hot and the staff has to buy their own fans, he added.
Teams of migrant employees have questioned the need for restrictions on foreigners, as the scenario in Singapore has improved.
Last September, the transient workers count too (TWC2) migrant staff organization argued that the government deserves to allow staff to leave their dormitories, given the low number of COVID-19 cases detected between them and efforts to isolate positive cases.
Medical experts also agreed that there is now little explanation as to why to impose restrictions on these workers.
With almost one component of the bedroom citizens giving positive for COVID-19, those staff have already received collective immunity, Mavens said. Collective immunity means that a giant component of the population is immune to the disease, offering coverage to un immunized people.
Associate Professor Alex Cook, of saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at the National University of Singapore, said that of the 3 points that remain under COVID-19 in dormitories: collective immunity, normal testing and restrictions on worker movement, collective immunity is the most important thing.
“I don’t know if it’s mandatory to maintain those restrictions. As noted, there are other barriers to transmission, such as collective immunity and common evidence, and for the intellectual well-being of residents, we deserve to aim to remove as many of those restrictions as possible,” Professor Assoc Cook said.
Once fully vaccinated or recovered, dormitory citizens would possibly be subject to the same restrictions as other network members who have been vaccinated, he added.
However, in an interview with the BBC on 14 March, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong noted that some of the foreigners in the dormitories are still vulnerable to infection and said it would be too complicated for them to freely combine with the general population, such as COVID. -19 is still circulating in Singapore.
“Making them live in a network like this, and at the same time being able to mix absolutely unrestrictedly with the rest of our outdoor population in the workplace, is a threat to get back to where we were,” the Prime Minister said. Leeward.
He added that he is aware of the intellectual tension of being locked up and that the government is making arrangements to make sure they don’t stay in his rooms all the time.
COMING SOON: MORE SPACE, BETTER LIFE
After COVID-19 highlighted the plight of migrant staff here, the government announced last June that it would take steps to get its people to live in dormitories.
The new bedrooms to be built in the coming years will have capacity for 100,000 employees and will have amenities such as mini markets, hairdressers and indoor recreational services. The blocks will be spaced to ensure intelligent ventilation, while the staff in those bedrooms will have easy access to medical care. Existing bedrooms will also be modernized to meet the new standards.
All bedrooms will be designed to be more resistant to the dangers of public fitness and will have advanced the living criteria relative to nationals and internationals, MOM said in June last year.
The government had already built seven quick-build bedrooms last year for the density of citizens in existing dormitories. Eight more are expected to be completed this year, with the 15 bedrooms housed in about 25,000 workers.
Designed to last two to 3 years, these bedrooms will serve as a control bed for new and advanced criteria in long-term bedrooms.
For example, they will be more spacious and offer 6 m2 or more, according to the capita, shared facilities. The number of citizens will also be limited to 10 to reduce the mix between citizens.
Current legislation requires bedrooms to provide at least 4. 5 m2, adding shared facilities, for residents. There is no limit to the number of residents.
Each room in a quick-build bedroom also has personal bathrooms to minimize the threat of transmission of shared facilities. There will also be at least one bathroom for five residents, of the 15 existing residents.
“The fundamental precept is to densify all rooms, to facilitate the segregation of residents, so that on the occasion of a pandemic, we can temporarily impose locks in a very focused and accurate manner,” said Labor Minister Tan See Leng. Parliament earlier this month.
During today’s scale in the quick-build bedroom passing through Westlite Accommodation on Tuas Avenue 2 last week, he observed that the room in the bedroom had only five single beds, located 1 meter away. There is also an adjacent bathroom in the room.
There are also two communal kitchens for block from 60 to 80 citizens, with staggered schedules for use by citizens. Other non-unusual facilities, such as the convenience store and fitness center, also restrict the number of citizens who can enter at any time.
Mathiyalagan Alagarsamy, a foreign employee staying in Tuas’ bedroom, said he liked the quick-build bedroom compared to the previous bedrooms he had stayed in because there was more area and distance between the beds, reducing his fears of suffering an inflamed incision with COVID. -19.
His previous room at Toh Guan Dormitory, controlled through Westlite Accommodation, had 10 residents.
The 27-year-old, who is a maintenance employee at Westlite, said that while it would possibly be embarrassing to comply with all regulations and regulations, he knows they are mandatory for his own protection during the pandemic.
Alagarsamy hopes that long-term bedrooms will also be limited to five other people depending on the room. I would also prefer the bedrooms to have a kitchen adjacent to the hassle of transporting food to your room.
TURN BEDROOMS INTO BEST ‘HOUSES’
Planned innovations for long-term dormitories will replace the way foreign staff live in a post-pandemic Singapore, industry observers and stakeholders said.
Johnathan Cheah, general manager of the S11’s bedrooms, said the new bedroom dwellers will be “really the landscape” and increase the popularity of life for workers.
As the government strives to make bedroom living spaces more spacious, there will be fewer occupants in the room and more amenities not unusual for citizens. For example, instead of a giant gym, there may be only 3 smaller gyms that citizens can use. , Mr. Cheah.
With fewer citizens and the same amount of amenities, staff will be able to take more advantage of amenities and see innovations in their area of housing and conditions, he added.
Kong Chee Min, CEO of Centurion Corporation, which is the parent company of Westlite Accomodation, said kitchens, sinks and adjacent showers will “make all the difference” in long-term bedrooms.
As these spaces are used through citizens, the threat of contact and contagion increases when more citizens of other rooms use these facilities.
Having non-unusual adjacent amenities will pose the threat of contracting a virus through contact, he said. Kong. Currently, not all bedrooms have such amenities. Some, adding existing Westlite bedrooms, are already doing so. Kong said his company would continue to build them in every bedroom in the long run.
In addition to the layout of the rooms, Mr. Kong stated that the design of the bedrooms, as well as the systems for managing the movement of foreign workers, would be important.
With the resumption of the use of collective amenities in dormitories, those one-bedroom facets will allow operators to mix citizens among the other blocks and rooms.
When asked if the adjustments in Westlite’s existing dormitories were good enough to deal with the next wave of a similar pandemic, Kong noted that the threat of the pandemic lies not only in the number of citizens in the room, but also in the way they are combined. in rooms, flats and bedroom blocks.
“Whether there are five or 12 more people living in an apartment, whether apartment citizens socialize or blend freely with citizens of other sets or blocks in the bedroom, there will be dangers of large-scale contact,” he said.
As such, in addition to other government measures, such as regime tests in which staff undergo COVID-19 testing every two weeks, Westlite has also implemented additional measures to reduce the threat of possible transmission, he added.
This includes separating citizens from dormitories into smaller sub-units, or “bubbles” of between one hundred and 150 citizens, in order to reduce contact and the threat of spread to a smaller number of citizens. Each bubble has compromised walking trails to ensure that citizens stay separated from other bubbles.
Westlite has also evolved and invested in physical services and technology programs to manage the movement of residents and the mix between those remote bubbles, Mr. Kong.
For example, it brought QR-activated electromagnetic locks (MS) to the entrances of all existing bedroom grounds to prevent citizens of other terrains and blocks from mixing with the pandemic. These padlocks will also be included in the long-term bedrooms to reduce mixing. among citizens, Mr. Kong.
However, Mr. Cheah of S11 warned that adjustments to dormitories would ensure their long-term pandemic resistance.
“Frankly, I don’t think a replacement in the appliance is just pandemic-proof dormitories, because long-term pandemics can exist in other ways, spread differently and humans in a different way,” he said.
Cheah, who is also president of the Singapore Dormitory Association, said the merger will also be on turning the behaviour of dormitory citizens into more aware of problems such as hygiene and social distance.
Who’s kicking the bill?
Better dormitories and better living conditions for foreign staff will come at a cost, and consumers and taxpayers even though everything will have to pay the bill, industry players said.
On the one hand, more area for employees means the fee will increase naturally, as will buy a four-bedroom Housing and Development Commission (HDB) apartment instead of a three-bedroom apartment, Mr. Cheah.
It estimated that dormitories based on the new government criteria would charge between $50 and $100 more according to the user according to the month, for the existing market value diversity of $280 to $350.
Construction is mandatory because bedroom operators will have to take over the construction of new bedrooms or the modernization of existing bedrooms. They will also have to increase rents to benefit from rents, Mr. Cheah.
The estimated construction comes with additional maintenance prices similar to safety measures, which, according to Cheah, can amount to about 40 S $40 per month. Additional prices would come with the hiring of a body of security workers to carry out more responsibilities, such as temperature control, he said. Cheah.
Foreign staff employers said they would incorporate increased bedroom costs into long-term contracts.
“So let’s say that in six months, the value of renting the bedrooms overlooks, so we must pay attention to the value that is given accordingly due to the higher overheads at the time,” said Nelson Tee, Managing Director of CHH Building System.
When asked if there is a way to reduce costs in other spaces so that contract costs do not increase, Mr. Tee said, “I don’t know what to decrease. We’re very limited in everything now. “
He said the structure sector lately “bleeds” due to high prices for curtains and labor. The industry will eventually have to find a way to increase productivity, but some overheads, such as staff benefits, can be reduced to keep contract prices low, he said. Added.
Speaking in his department’s budget debate in March, Dr. Tan, the current Minister of Labor, said the government recognizes that employers and dormitory operators will likely face higher prices for dormitories in the future.
“Many corporations would have blocked their prices on their existing projects and will now want time to adjust to the high housing prices of migrant workers.
“Bedroom operators would possibly also be more cautious in their bids to build and own new bedrooms, given the dubious call for housing for migrant employees, as well as the COVID-19 conversion scenario,” he said.
As a result, the government is exploring the option of creating specially built long-term dormitories on another operating model, Dr. Tan said.
Under the existing system, land is being released to allow advertising operators to tender, build and operate the dormitories.
One such new model, introduced through the authorities, is the “construction, asset and rental model” in which the government builds the bedroom. A separate entity, such as a personal enterprise or non-governmental organization, can then lease and operate it, said Wong, minister of education and co-chair of the working group, in June last year.
This style has been tested with quick-build bedrooms. For example, the quick-build bedroom on Tuas Avenue 2 is developed through JTC Corporation and rented and controlled through Westlite Accommodation.
Cheah said that style would put the government in a better position to make adjustments to the bedrooms if necessary, as in a pandemic.
You can also set bedroom rental rates when you request offers, he said. Cheah.
However, this would possibly make it more difficult for dormitory operators to benefit because they will have to overlook the government budget.
With this model, bedroom management entities will also assume the role of control officer so that the estate is well maintained and citizenship is cared for, i. e. control agents from other industries treating citizens, such as hotel operators, would possibly also need to enter the market, expanding the festival for existing dormitory operators Mr. Mc President said. Cheah.
Mr. Cheah felt that the existing style is the most productive because the trader has a direct interest in the asset, having spent cash to get the land and build the bedroom.
“So, naturally, you’ll have to make sure the bedroom is working properly. Laws like FEDA will prevent dormitories from complying with regulations,” Cheah said, referring to the foreign workers’ dormitory law that regulates, among other things, the provision of amenities and services, fitness and protection in dormitories that house 1000 or more residents.
Whatever the style, despite everything adopted, one thing is for sure: there can be no turning back to the prestige quo ante: many other people in Singapore have spoken out on behalf of foreign workers, who have helped prevent the city-state hummed. all this Years.
Meanwhile, foreigners wait for the day when they can faint as before.
Miraz said: “It is my prayer that I no longer need to see COVID-19 in Singapore. He’s smart for us, the staff and the Singaporeans. We just don’t need to see any more instances and the government will let us out. “, he said. Miraz.
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