Focus on worker safety
The following AFP story was published in the Straits Times on 18 August 2010.
Focus on worker safety
Aug 18, 2010
SINGAPORE - ALAM Khali can still remember vividly how he feared for his safety whenever he squatted on the back of an open-topped lorry while being ferried to construction sites in Singapore.
Squashed in with other foreign labourers, the 40-year-old Bangladeshi said he clung on to whatever part of the lorry he could get his hands on as the vehicle made its way around the wealthy city-state.
'Of course scared, but boss says take lorry, we take,' Mr Khali, who has been working in Singapore since 2003, shrugged in an interview at a hotel construction site while having a lunch of plain vegetables and white rice. Thanks to a new boss, Mr Khali now gets a stipend to travel by subway to work, but most of the estimated 245,000 foreign construction workers from poorer Asian countries are not so lucky.
Transported around like cattle even under pouring rain, the workers are a daily reminder to Singaporeans of how tough it is to be at the bottom of the economic ladder, but attitudes are changing.
Lee Kitt Anya, an 11-year-old schoolgirl, won a national book-writing competition last year for a story she wrote about a fictional Indian worker after being shocked by the sight of a group of labourers on a lorry. 'It's quite a horrifying sight because it was raining very heavily and they were so wet,' she recalled. 'I felt quite appalled.' Ms Lee donated part of the proceeds from her book to a welfare group for migrant workers called HOME. 'I don't mind and I don't really need the money, they need it more,' she said.
The death of three Chinese workers in road accidents in June has prompted Singapore to accelerate the implementation of new safety rules, including fitting lorries with canopies and higher side railings. 'Singaporeans are generally used to seeing workers transported in this way, but even so, more and more feel that it is wrong,' said John Gee, president of Transient Workers Count 2 (TWC2), a local advocacy group for migrant workers. 'Their sympathy with the workers rises every time there is an accident, or when they find themselves in heavy traffic during a downpour and see workers crouched in the back of a lorry, holding what they can over their heads to offer some protection,' he told AFP. -- AFP
Focus on worker safety
Aug 18, 2010
SINGAPORE - ALAM Khali can still remember vividly how he feared for his safety whenever he squatted on the back of an open-topped lorry while being ferried to construction sites in Singapore.
Squashed in with other foreign labourers, the 40-year-old Bangladeshi said he clung on to whatever part of the lorry he could get his hands on as the vehicle made its way around the wealthy city-state.
'Of course scared, but boss says take lorry, we take,' Mr Khali, who has been working in Singapore since 2003, shrugged in an interview at a hotel construction site while having a lunch of plain vegetables and white rice. Thanks to a new boss, Mr Khali now gets a stipend to travel by subway to work, but most of the estimated 245,000 foreign construction workers from poorer Asian countries are not so lucky.
Transported around like cattle even under pouring rain, the workers are a daily reminder to Singaporeans of how tough it is to be at the bottom of the economic ladder, but attitudes are changing.
Lee Kitt Anya, an 11-year-old schoolgirl, won a national book-writing competition last year for a story she wrote about a fictional Indian worker after being shocked by the sight of a group of labourers on a lorry. 'It's quite a horrifying sight because it was raining very heavily and they were so wet,' she recalled. 'I felt quite appalled.' Ms Lee donated part of the proceeds from her book to a welfare group for migrant workers called HOME. 'I don't mind and I don't really need the money, they need it more,' she said.
The death of three Chinese workers in road accidents in June has prompted Singapore to accelerate the implementation of new safety rules, including fitting lorries with canopies and higher side railings. 'Singaporeans are generally used to seeing workers transported in this way, but even so, more and more feel that it is wrong,' said John Gee, president of Transient Workers Count 2 (TWC2), a local advocacy group for migrant workers. 'Their sympathy with the workers rises every time there is an accident, or when they find themselves in heavy traffic during a downpour and see workers crouched in the back of a lorry, holding what they can over their heads to offer some protection,' he told AFP. -- AFP
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