File photo
We see migrant construction workers in lorries; we see them at work. It’s understandable, perhaps, that in our minds, they are reduced to just these images. We don’t see them walking their kids to school. We don’t see them as proud fathers at their daughter’s graduation ceremony. We don’t see them holding their mother’s hand as she breathes her last.
But they are all these as well.
At TWC2’s free meals programme, volunteers like me get an opportunity to just chat with migrant workers. Sure, because they’re at TWC2, they most likely are facing some kind of problem and seeking our help. But their problems don’t define them anymore than their riding in lorries or sweating under the hot sun define them. Even amidst their problems – and sometimes intractable problems – they have families they love and aspirations they hold dear.
Alif (not his real name) has a wife, a daughter and three sons back home in Bangladesh. As he speaks of them, their individual personalities and quirks, I can sense a fondness.
His only daughter is married, and is currently living in Saudi Arabia with her husband. They own a shop there, selling electrical goods.
His eldest son is one of few words and brief replies, belying a heart of generosity evidenced by distributing free medicines in his village in Chattogram. This son studied civil engineering, Alif says with pride, and for this reason the father is encouraging him to head to Singapore to work in the construction industry.
His youngest son is fourteen and still in high school.
In between, his second son, is eighteen, and is studying management and banking. He is intelligent and friendly, says Alif, who immediately recalls with a chuckle, that this boy has a habit of lifting the lids off pots on stoves to take in a waft of culinary aroma.
It’s easy to forget that for many long years, Alif was actually away from his family. Especially because he has had so little time with his family, these recalled vignettes must be precious.
Alif first came to Singapore in 2012 to join his first company, where he worked six years until April 2018. In that time, he went home only briefly, in 2014, and for the saddest of reasons – the passing of his mother.
Then, in 2018 after that job ended, he had six months back home before he came back to Singapore again. This time, Alif recalls, he got the job with much lower recruitment fee than the first job, due to the fact that the recruiter was his friend. This second job involved interior renovations: plumbing, painting and setting up partitions, among other tasks.
Nine years working in a bank
This was not the life he imagined for himself as a young man. Alif had graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce. He went to work for a bank and was in this line for nine years. But low salaries and poor career growth prospects in Bangladesh push tens of thousands of young men to work abroad each year. Alif was one of many.
It was in this second job, post-2018, that times turned difficult. It was a period of financial struggles. We all remember Covid-19 and the disruption that resulted. For months, migrant workers were without work, stuck in their dormitories. Despite this, Alif still faced a pressing need to remit money to his family to meet their financial needs. School fees had to be coughed up.
Then his second son tripped and fell down a flight of stairs. Alif had to borrow money to cover this son’s medical bills.
As if things were not bad enough, the second employer shortpaid him, and that’s how he ended up at TWC2 seeking our help to pursue a salary claim. Hopefully, this will be concluded soon, because otherwise he remains in limbo with neither work nor income.
What does he plan to do after the salary claim is settled?
He plans to to go home and set up a food business, Alif says, going on to share with me his thoughts on business ethics. I see a certain rectitude. Selling for cheaper allows for a greater number of customers to afford and hence purchase your goods, he explains. Yet, there are businesses that sell at steeper prices with the intention of becoming richer quickly. In his moral opinion, the former is a more ethical business operation, wherein wealth is earned over an extended time (and I can see in his explanation a hint of business as service to the community). The latter, on the other hand, is suggestive of amassing profit as priority.
And so our conversation carries on in this vein.
But was I speaking with a construction worker? Yes. Was I speaking to a father, a son, a man with responsibilities, someone with plans for the future, and thoughts on ethics? Yes too.
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