Two migrant workers taught me human values
I REALISED recently that I’ve never had a real conversation with a migrant worker, not one where we talk to each other as equals.
This came as a rude surprise since I’ve always thought of myself as rather enlightened when it comes to such matters. After all, in 2008, I had refused to join my neighbours in signing a “not in my backyard” (nimby) petition against the construction of a foreign workers’ dormitory in our estate. But my views on and behaviour towards migrant workers living in our midst have shifted little in the last 12 years.
Fortunately, some of my fellow Singaporeans have moved faster and further towards greater solidarity; and it is thanks to the Welcome In My Backyard (Wimby) team that I got to be part of a discussion with two migrant workers as panel speakers. For the first time, I heard for myself – via Zoom – a migrant worker speak about his encounters with Singaporeans who made him feel like an alien.
“I really don’t want to highlight these things ... if you go on the MRT or somewhere else, some locals really react differently,” said Ripon Chowdhury, who is in his early 30s. He has been living in Singapore since 2010 and works in quality control at a shipyard.
“So if suddenly, we shift to an HDB (housing) estate,” the activist and blogger added, “they may think that these people are coming from a different planet. I just want them to welcome us as a friend, as a neighbour, as they treat others, and not feel that we are people coming from dorms, dirty places.”
The Wimby campaign was launched in April by a group of volunteers to encourage Singaporeans to welcome migrant workers relocated from dormitories to Housing Development Board (HDB) estates as part of the country’s efforts to curtail the spread of Covid-19.
Wimby’s Backyard Conversation, held last month, featured Chowdhury and his Bangladeshi compatriot Islam Rockybul as panellists.
Rockybul was chatty, smiled a lot and is a safety coordinator at a construction site.
“Every day, I receive a call from my home but once, one of my Singaporean friends asked me: ‘Rocky, how are you?’” he said.
“You don’t know how I feel at that time, that someone in Singapore cares about me and is really asking, ‘Rocky how are you?’ It made my energy level very high.”
At which point, he is asked by forum moderator and Wimby campaign co-leader Nicholas Oh: “So how are you feeling now, Rocky?”
To which he replied: “Right now, I can express and even share on behalf of our migrant community, it feels really great.”
Referring to Oh, his fellow moderator Jennifer Lim Wei Zhen of Wimby and panellist Seema Punwani of non-profit organisation Transient Workers Count Too, Rockybul added: “I don’t know Nick, I don’t know Jennifer. I don’t know Seema. We are from different countries, but for now, I feel we are like a family.”
So what did I learn from Wimby’s Backyard Conversation?
I learnt that I can enlarge my heart.
To do that, I need to keep working at becoming more generous and respectful in how I treat migrant workers.
Singaporeans can make the first move to reach out to migrant workers, says panellists Goh Wei Leong of Healthserve and Ruchi Trivedi of Itsrainingraincoats, both non-profit organisations.
On migrant workers moving to stay in HDB estates, Goh says: “Both sides are feeling strange. So I think we should just make the first move, be generous, start the conversation and I think the more conversations and friendships are formed, the better it is for all of us.”
That invitation gave me pause, for a handful of migrant workers live next door to my parents. We’ve passed them food, especially when we have more than we can finish, but never did it occur to me to invite them over for a drink or a meal. Perhaps it will be time to, when it’s safe for us to socialise once more.
As human beings, we are all social creatures and long to be welcomed, accepted and cared for.
Too often in Singapore and many other countries, the discussion about how best to house migrant workers is couched in terms of their utility and the associated costs of their labour, not their humanity. Yet surely it is humanity that comes first.
“Where, after all, do universal human rights begin?” asked Eleanor Roosevelt, who as first chairman of the United Nations Commission for Human Rights oversaw the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948.
“In small places, close to home,” was her reply, “so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world.
“Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighbourhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination.
“Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.” – The Straits Times/asia News Network