Today, I went to the Carnival, I didn’t manage to find a way in, however, the experience of going to the location was really impactful. The dormitory is located at 34 Mandai Estate, when I was traveling there, I was trying to imagine what the dormitory looked like. I thought that the complex would be open, have some shops nearby and relatively close to places where other Singaporeans live e.g HDBs. However, my idea was so wrong. When I got there, the everything was enclosed in metal fencing, the courtyard where the migrant brothers worked was also enclosed in a metal fence. The quality of the football goals and basketball hoops weren’t very good either. As I circled the complex, I could see that security was of importance there, people needed passes to get in, women could only enter on specific days and times. I also could also get a glimpse of the rooms that the workers stayed in by looking through the windows. It seems that the accommodation is very small and many workers have to squeeze in there. A lot of the workers were participating in the carnival, others were in their rooms and others were sitting around conversing with one another. To me, I felt like the dorms were just a large jail cell.
This brings me to my main take away from home. At HOME, something that stuck and resonated with me would be “What is considered adequate living conditions?”. Would providing a shelter be considered adequate living conditions?. Since the SG Government hasn’t explicitly stated what each contractor has to provide to the workers, they can just use their best guess and decide how much they want to give to their workers.
