My engagement this time was an interview with another TWC2 volunteer Ms Mizue Sauco. Our interview was mainly based around the situation of the dormitories when the rise of infections was about to happen.
As Ms Sauco answered my questions, she explained to me what was going on in the begging of the Covid-19 crisis, which I found very interesting. According to her, TWC2 and other organisations that work for migrant workers had been realising that there would be a big outbreak sometime among the dormitories if the disease was very infectious in many ways. She told me frankly, that anyone who knew about the situations of the dormitories would have imagined so as well. Therefore, from the end of March, TWC2 had been sending warnings to the government in order to take some kind of action. However, since the pandemic was already happening and the government was busy with sorting out the increase of imported cases, there was nothing much they were able to do. Even if they did have some time to spare, Ms Sauco doubts whether they were able to do anything that would have made the situation any better. This is because the problem of the dormitories of migrant workers has been an ongoing issue that will not get better in a short time. If the government were to widen the area of the dormitory per person, which is a commonly discussed issue recently, they will need more buildings for the workers to stay in. If they were to improve the hygiene in dormitories, they would have to both instruct the workers, and get more dorm operators for them to look after. As it can be seen from here, the Covid-19 crisis has highlighted the existing issues that had been left unsolved during the years. Therefore, it can be said that the increase in Covid-19 infections was not entirely due to the private and public sector in the time of the crisis, but the root of the problems had a big responsibility as well.
However, Ms Sauco noted that the government and the private sector could have done better when infection numbers started to rise. First of all, the government had only asked the employers to take more care for their hygiene and where they go. However, the employers were not all capable of managing all these, and some did not even feel the obligation to communicate with the workers about the pandemic. In the MOM’s website as well, there was initially no information about the pandemic in Tamil and Bengali. I was very surprised when Ms Sauco told me her experience of her being asked by the workers whether the pandemic is actually happening since they had only heard it as rumours. Even if these factors had been altered it still remains a mystery whether the situation had been better. However, it is also true that it would have been very unlikely for the virus not to spread when the workers were not informed about it well.