Listening to episode 17 of the Ears of East podcast, an important topic of discussion came up– the treatment of migrant workers. I agree with what is being said in the podcast. Changes definitely need to be made for the treatment and wellbeing of migrant workers. While the government’s response to the outbreak in the dormitories has been positive and taken seriously, the issue that needs to be highlighted is how they were overlooked and not taken into consideration before the dormitories became clusters. Even in our society, the migrant workers are overlooked and not considered as part of our community. I remember talking to my parents when I first signed up for the Gov.sg daily updates about why the migrant workers weren’t counted in the ‘community cases’ category, and this is discussed in the podcast as well. For a long time, the categories were ‘cases in the community’, ‘work permit holders (residing outside dormitories)’ and ‘work permit holders (residing in dormitories)’. While I understand this was partly due to recognising that it was a cluster, the message coming across from that grouping wasn’t positive. Now, they have changed the categories they use in the daily updates but going forward, we need to make substantial change. The government has announced that they will be making new dormitories with improved living conditions but we need to do more. We need to change our mindsets and recognise migrant workers as part of our community. They have done so much for our community and without them, Singapore could not be the way it is today.