14 November 2021

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More than 300,000 migrant workers, many of them from South Asia, live in dorms in the prosperous city-state, where they are typically packed into shared rooms and sleep on bunk beds.

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Curbs have been eased for most in Singapore, where — despite currently facing a renewed virus wave — vaccinated people can go out shopping and to restaurants, and borders are gradually re-opening.

But it is a different story for the low-paid migrants, who remain subject to far more onerous restrictions that mostly allow them to travel only between their work and accommodation.

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“Our government doesn’t quite see them as fully human,” Alex Au, vice-president of migrant rights group Transient Workers Count Too, told AFP.

Authorities treat the migrants like “an economic commodity”, and fail to “accord them the same rights, the same freedoms that our citizens have,” he said.

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