The story of what happened to Zakir Hossain, the Bangladeshi worker whose work pass was not renewed, has reignited the usual storm on who are the foreigners living and working in Singapore.
Mr Hossain is regarded in some camps as someone who has worked hard in the jobs that Singaporeans were simply not willing to do. However, there is a group who think that Mr Hossain is an ungrateful SOB who had the audacity to complain about not wanting to live in a place where the Minister of Manpower was only willing to enter if he was in a hazmat suit.
So, given that the topic has ignited a few interesting views, I thought it might be worth asking ourselves who these chaps are. It’s a question that needs to be asked because as with passionate debates, both sides become so focused on the debate and their point of view, that they forget that what you’re talking about is a human being.
It’s easy to blame your problems on a group when you label them as “illegals” or “criminals,” especially when that group has less than you. However, when you fall into that trap, you lose something important – your basic humanity.
I look at the issue of “foreign labour,” from the sad reality of being a “loser” in the capitalist system. Didn’t get a foothold to build a corporate career in a field in which I would excel.
When I freelanced, I had a few lucky breaks but couldn’t quite build on them. So, at the age of 38, I ended up waiting tables so that I could pay basic bills, and you could say that I should have become the prime target for unscrupulous snake oil salesmen wanting political power (graduate member of the ethnic majority needing to take a subsistence job to survive).
I didn’t go down the dark path for a simple reason. When I became a “loser” in the economic system, I became a “winner” as a human being. My fellow waiters for Pinoys and the chefs were primarily Tamil chaps from India and Malaysia. These guys became my workmates and I got to know them as people who had things like families.
The guy from that period of my life that comes to mind is Rafey, the Pinoy chap who did all the “real” work at the Bistrot for seven years. He became invaluable to me.
I was the one that customers liked, but I could only be liked because Rafey did the work. Poor guy had only one problem – he was a bloke and when a little Minx got hired, he suddenly found himself surrounded by rumours that he had made attempts to molest her (which were not true) and he was eventually fired after seven years of loyal service.
Working in a restaurant was an eye-opener, and I remember there were people in Singapore who thought that Trump’s rhetoric toward Mexicans was great. For me, I couldn’t understand it because, in the Singapore context, it was like saying people like Rafey had “stolen” jobs from me and from my experiences with the guys – this line of thought, simply did not make sense. The guys, I worked with, saw an opportunity to earn a bit of money to give their families a better life.
The Pinoy and Indian chaps I worked with in the restaurant were just ordinary guys trying to make a living, just like me.
Then I went to work in the insolvency trade and saw that the “screwing” of the downtrodden wasn’t a textbook exercise. If anything, it was perfectly legal and, in many cases, encouraged. One of my early cases was a construction company which had 30 over workers who hadn’t been paid for over five months. As the Company had been liquidated, we had to fire them.
A few of the Tremeritus crowd get very upset with me for being “pro-Indian” and “anti-Chinese.” The truth is, I’m particularly pro or anti anybody but the fact remains, many of the people who have blessed me, have inevitably been Indian (and in many cases, Muslim). I’ve mentioned that I was lucky to be on the receiving end of guys in the IIT and IIM Alumni associations. However, you could say that what transpired between myself and the guys with corporate jobs was part of my “good” fortune.
My real blessing was dealing with the workers that I sacked and couldn’t help get the money that they had worked for but could not claim. These guys have every reason to hate me. I was the public face of the end of their livelihood. Every time they called me to ask for the money they were promised, I was the one with the story. I didn’t believe me half the time, yet they listened to my “excuses.”
I did encourage them to harass me. I did tell them they had the right to attend creditor meetings. I did extend loans from personal funds to a few. This last point, in particular, is “controversial,” in as much as I was violating professional rules of favouring creditors and as a colleague kept saying “You know you can’t trust Bangladeshi Workers,” (her judgement was based on working in a law firm that had to defend workers whom she believed were screwing insurance companies.)
It wasn’t easy. I got calls at the most inappropriate moments on a regular basis, I had to psychologically write off the pennies I was giving out. Thankfully, humanity won the day. When we finally paid the workers what was due to them, I got most of what I had lent out.
Here is a message from a Bangladeshi Worker I had lent some money during that period:
In another case, the guy actually called me up to tell me his wife had given birth to twins. I was officially the first person outside his family whom he told. Met him on the day that he was flying back to India, and he paid me most of what he owed, and I got dinner out of it.
It’s like this, these guys were trying to make a living. They were willing to clean our crap because it pays better than the professional jobs available back home. They’re willing to put up with a lot of crap so that they can get that opportunity to provide for their families (I still get texts from these guys asking if I can help find jobs in Singapore).
They are, what you would call, just acting out like how normal people would react in certain situations. They aren’t passive victims nor are they, active criminals. They are merely human beings trying to earn a living and if you look at the instances where they have “rebelled” and “complained” about, it’s inevitably been in situations where most of us would probably act in that particular way.
Think about it, in 2013, when they went to riot, they did so because the police seemed more interested in protecting the guy who killed their friend than in solving the problem. The latest instant, with Mr Hossain, is merely a case of a human being stating that he doesn’t think people should live in a place that causes disease (a fact which the minister in his hazmat suit confirmed).
The start of any policy towards our foreign workers should be based on remembering that they’re humans like us who were in a certain situation and will behave accordingly.
A version of this article first appeared at beautifullyincoherent.blogspot.com