The Builders of Singapore

Living each day risking their lives, with a small budget that we can’t even imagine. Living like ghosts, not getting recognized for how much they give. Their inner rage they can’t express because of how “worthless” they are. These “worthless” people are the builders of singapore, these are the people who work to give Singapore a “good name”. These people are Singapore’s migrant workers.

“People here are nice, but sometimes they would try to intimidate me for no reason…” Anthony Sega a migrant worker from India. Over social media, insults of migrant workers flood throughout the web. Messages such as, “Those Banglas on the street smell so bad…” were found throughout Facebook all over the place. Through these messages, it reveals that we’ve completely lost respect for our migrant workers who builds Singapore for us.

The total amount of migrant workers currently in Singapore is around a million people people. All these people help build our shops, homes, schools, etc… Earning about 450-650 SGD monthly. Most migrant workers send their salary back to their families, which leaves a small amount for themselves to fulfill their needs. “It would be enough for their families to live, but since Singapore isn’t such a cheap place to live in, it would be hard for themselves to get what they need...” Dylan Tsao, UWCSEA G8 student.

Do migrant workers harm us? Do they do something to annoy us? The answer to that is no. They basically work to build our homes, the malls we go to shop and the school we learn at. Let’s try putting ourselves in the place of being a migrant worker for a day. ‘Clink, clank!’ is all we would hear, metal’s colliding, workers shouting and screaming here and there, if we look down its a stairway to hell, and looking at the bright sun that tells us there’s still hours left of work. It’s finally over, it’s time for dinner. We look at our wallet and all we see is a ragged little coin and a 2 dollar note. Enough for a luxurious buffet dinner? Perhaps just a few hundred short.

Try to imagine this. If migrant workers were dressed properly, were clean and were “white” would we respect them? If yes, why? It’s probably because they wouldn’t smell bad, they won’t look bad and they just look like a “normal” person. That means we’re judging them by how they look. Just because of how they look doesn’t make them a alien. They are still human.

It’s a good thing to have migrant workers come over to Singapore to help build the community. Both parties can benefit from each other, just that some aren’t treated the way they should be with the things they are doing. It’s true that they look different from most of us, different skin tone, their way of living, their culture, etc. People in public are disgusted by them because of how they smell and look. It seems that just because they’re different from us, we’re forgetting about how we should be thankful for them. We have to start respecting them for what they do and not hate because of how they look. Just like the saying, “Never judge a book by its cover…”

Written by Youngchan