File photo of a typical food court. This is not the food court referred to in this story.

Myanmar national Thakyaw (name changed) used to work in a food court in downtown Singapore, manning a Chinese food stall alongside his bosses. He is fluent in English, yet when he describes his interactions with neighbouring stalls, his accounts are punctuated by comments that “it’s hard to speak to them” or similar references to language difficulties.

We need to get to the bottom of that.

“Let’s start with your bosses,” we say. “Are they Singaporeans?”

They’re “two friends from China,” he replies. “Both men”. Thakyaw has had to learn basic Chinese to communicate with them. It sounds like the two bosses only speak Chinese.

We move on to other stalls’ owners and Thakyaw estimates that about half of them would similarly be Chinese nationals. The other half would be a mix of Singaporeans and Malaysians.

The ratios are different when it comes to staff. A clear majority of the workers in the foodcourt would be from China too. They speak little English, perhaps 50 words in all. The rest are Burmese like himself, Vietnamese, Thai and Malaysians. That said, he cannot really tell the difference between a Malaysian and a Singaporean.

Those are the people we see fronting the stalls, but a foodcourt cannot operate without another two sets of crew less visible than the stall workers. One set would be the team who clean the tables and run the central washing station. Burmese and Malaysian, he says. Your writer thinks that’s about right. We can hardly imagine any Singaporean willing to do that kind of job.

The other team, virtually invisible to the public, would be the crew that comes in around 22:00h every evening to do a thorough cleaning of the place: floor, tables, etc. Thakyaw would see them arrive just as he would be getting off work and going home. “I don’t know how long they work,” he explains in answer to my question. This crew looks South Asian, possibly Indian Malaysian but more likely – because wages would be cheaper – Indian nationals. Your writer wonders how many of them are working within the scope of their work passes. It’s easy to deploy student visa-holders or Training Employment Pass-holders to these jobs because they work after the food court is closed and so, are barely noticeable to the public.

Your writer once heard from a construction worker that his boss wanted to deploy him to such duties when business was poor – something about projects slowing down.

Long working hours

Thakyaw came to TWC2 with several grievances about his working conditions. One of them was about long working hours. He had to start each day around 09:00h, but would not be able to get off work till 22:00h – thirteen hours. He worked seven days a week, with two rest days a month. Yet he was neither paid extra for his overtime hours or for giving up the other rest days.

“How about the workers in the other stalls?” we enquire.

“All same,” he says. “All working 12 hours or more.”

Your writer suggests that it should be possble to arrange a staff roster for two shifts. Thakyaw looks straight at me, eyes wide open, as if thinking, “Did you just come from outer space?”

Now looking for another job, Thakyaw is adamant, “I don’t want to work in a food court anymore.”

A typical set meal in a food court.

Customers

We turn briefly to the profile of customers. Mostly Singaporeans, he says, white-collar workers from the massive office towers in the area. There are tourists too, and it falls to Thakyaw, with his English, to explain to them how to order from his food stall.

Food courts are ubiquitous in Singapore. They are clean, airconditioned, and with 20 – 30 stalls, present us with variety. Successors to our long heritage of street food, these places are almost iconic. Watch any video on social media made by first-time visitors to Singapore, and almost always, they will feature something about food in a hawker centre or food court. Yet, once we look under the bonnet, it’s a place largely run by foreigners, from the cooking to the cleaning.

If we think that the food court scene is very much part of Singapore, we need to accept that these Work Permit and S-Pass holders are part of Singapore too. That shouldn’t be too difficult; we interact with them often enough. What may be more contentious is whether the 13-hour, overtime-unpaid day is part of Singapore too.

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