By Ignatius Low, The Straits Times, 6 Mar 2012
YOU can always count on Ms Indranee Rajah (Tanjong Pagar GRC) to tell a good story in Parliament. Often, the stories are amusing, but also instructive.
Yesterday, during the Committee of Supply debate for the Ministry of Manpower, she had another good one. But this time, her tale horrified more than it amused me.
She had gone to investigate why foreign workers seem to like to loiter at HDB void decks in the Silat precinct of her constituency.
It turns out that they are Punjabi workers who have suffered work-related injuries and are waiting for their compensation claims to be processed.
While they are injured, they cannot work. Their employers continue to house them in dormitories but, wickedly, do not give them food.
So the workers go to a Sikh temple near Silat Road for free vegetarian food. They do not go back to their dormitories because they want to save on transport. So they end up loitering around the areas next to the temple.
She ended the story by revealing that some workers have been doing this for as long as eight months, while they wait for their claims to be processed.
Stories like this make me pause and wonder whether our country has really made the transition from Third World to First. Is Singapore really a civilised and developed society?
If so, why is it that so many of us sometimes refuse to see an issue from anything but the most practical perspective of cost versus benefit, dollars and sense?
Perhaps this is a product of our history as a young nation that had to fight for economic survival. As a result, we have become a pragmatic and prudent people that make decisions in a utilitarian manner.
So whether it is the siting of eldercare facilities near our homes or giving our domestic maids a rest day every week, we sometimes set aside more intangible ideals.
It alarms me to think that the solution to getting the employers of the Punjabi loiterers to treat their workers right is, as Ms Indranee put it, 'better enforcement'.
And while I was glad when Minister of State for Manpower Tan Chuan-Jin finally announced yesterday that a weekly rest day for maids would become compulsory, I was slightly sad that employers will be 'doing the right thing' (the subtitle of his speech) because they have been, in a way, compelled to.
Speaking just before Mr Tan, Mr Yeo Guat Kwang (Ang Mo Kio GRC) noted that the United Nations had passed a new convention on Decent Work for Domestic Workers that obliges countries to abide by international labour standards that stipulate, among other things, the minimum of one rest day per work week.
Singapore remains one of a handful of countries worldwide that lack provisions for weekly rest days. When I hear stories of how some employers here treat their maids, I see eerie and disturbing parallels with the way houseservants were treated in the recent movie The Help and television series Downton Abbey.
In his speech, Mr Tan asked Singaporeans to think about 'how this reflects upon us as a society'.
But in true Singaporean fashion, he still had to argue for the change in largely cost-benefit terms: happier maids do better work, and more maids will want to work in Singapore, thus easing a supply crunch.
Are we, then, a lost cause?
Thankfully, yesterday's parliamentary debate contained many indications that we might yet, as a people, be persuaded to take a wider perspective on things.
Three or four MPs stood up in quick succession to lobby passionately for the Government to change its mind on putting a road through the Bukit Brown cemetery - an issue that has sharply pitted the very practical considerations of development against more intangible ones of national heritage and identity.
They did not succeed and are unlikely to. But it was significant that so many of them gave expression to sentiments that many politicians would perhaps have previously deemed too 'touchy-feely' to be seriously debated in this country's Parliament.
And it was gratifying that Mr Tan - wearing his hat as Minister of State for National Development - had to get all 'touchy-feely' himself, agreeing that Nominated MP Janice Koh's memories of visiting Bukit Brown as a child are 'anchors to our past' and revealing a few anchors of his own for good measure (A&W Coney Dogs, anyone?).
He stood his ground on the issue of the cemetery, but not just with the harder engineering arguments.
'What makes us who we are can be found in here, in our heads, and here, in all our hearts. And nothing can take that away from us,' he concluded.
It was similarly encouraging to hear several MPs emphasise that the Housing Board must go beyond simply providing the requisite number of flats and amenities in housing estates.
From building sports facilities and open areas to catering for 'white spaces' that residents can take ownership for, they argued that designing great neighbourhoods is a 'touchy-feely' (there's that word again) business too.
NMP Laurence Lien noted, for example, that housing infrastructure needs to support the 'building up of relationships' among the people that live there.
He dreams of every neighbourhood in Singapore being unique and diverse, reflecting the identity of residents who want to continue living there because they are emotionally attached to the place. This has long been talked about by the planners.
But the reality is still a far cry away, since for many people, a property's dollar value seems paramount and people move homes for profit.
Can we, as a society, ultimately get there? Not unless we learn to balance our obsession with the practical with life's intangibles.
Yesterday's debate showed that, in many areas, we have a long way to go. But I would also say it signalled that we have more than made a start.
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