Had a short writing hiatus as I recently had a reservist recall to be a part of the Forward Assurance and Support Team (FAST) at one of the purpose-built foreign worker dormitories. The role of the FAST officer was to help ensure that the dormitory managers were taking care of the foreign workers' needs during this trying period and also to be a liaison between the dormitory manager and the multi-ministry task force coordinating the overall response. Will give an overview of the work done and before giving some opinions on popular issues.

Day 1: Day Shift (8am - 8pm)

Day 2: Night Shift (8pm - 8am)

Day 3: (end night shift) Off

Day 4: Full day Off

This was a good reminder of how much I disliked night shift even though there tends to be less activity. Really am not a night person and struggled to stay alert especially from about 2-5am. Luckily for the 2nd half of the reservist, the Ramadan fasting month started so there was the pre-dawn meal (sahur) distribution to coordinate. The day after night shift isn't exactly a free day in my opinion because I would either be sleeping or feeling groggy for the rest of the day.

The actual work revolved around lots of planning and tracking. We had to plan out which rooms and tentages we would use for different levels of isolation (ie. waiting for the swab test result, negative result, positive result). As the case count rose over the few weeks I was there, we had to make space for more rooms or put more beds in each room. One of the more tedious tasks was movement tracking, to ensure we knew who was in which room and what their status was at any one time. While most of the tasks appear easy on paper, there were many little details to be cognizant about during the execution.

For example, meal distribution. We had to ensure that meals were distributed efficiently to everyone via their room ICs as the meals would have an expiry time. At the same time, we had to ensure there was no overcrowding. To add to the complexity of the situation, different rooms were made up of different types of people who required different types of meals. We had Bangladeshi, Indian and Chinese meals. This required collating a list of thousands of worker meal preferences sorted by rooms, which was a nightmare since the dormitory manager was quite liberal in allowing workers to change rooms so the initial lists we had were usually wrong.

Dormitory conditions

There has been a lot of flak regarding the cramped conditions of many purpose-built dormitories. While this is true for some dormitories, I think the standards vary by dormitory operator. This is where one can tell the difference between a good and bad dormitory operator in my opinion. The dorm operators are responsible for the upkeep of the place and are the ones in control of the cleaning and security contracts. Not sure how much I am allowed to say but generally you get what you pay for.

Post-Covid, I think there would be a comprehensive review of the Foreign Employees Dormitory Act (FEDA), which is an act that regulates the operations of dormitories housing FW. There are certainly many areas which need improvement/refinement and its much harder to overlook such issues now that Covid-19 has thrust the spotlight on them. For example, there could be a cap on the number of FW to be housed within a certain area or more frequent cleaning. While dorm operators are expected to take on some of these increased costs, some of these would also flow down to employers in the form of higher bed rents.

Food

During the lockdown, foreign workers are provided 3 meals (breakfast lunch dinner) by the Singapore government. As earlier mentioned, the meals are split into 3 main types, Bangladeshi, Indian and Chinese. From what I have seen, I think the food is comparable to hawker food standards. While some of them may have been catered from restaurants, there is only so much a restaurant can do to ensure consistent quality when cooking for thousands of people. The key would be to ensure the logistics of delivery and distribution is well planned out such that food doesn't go bad.

Based on feedback collated by the MOM officers, it seems that FWs were generally happy with the food although there was a vocal minority posting their unhappiness on social media. Hopefully, they can understand that we can try to ensure the food quality up to a certain level but anything beyond that is not feasible.

It was also disheartening to see the amount of wastage at each meal. Many boxes of untouched food paid for by SG taxpayers are being thrown away as a result of either over-ordering or FWs not liking the food. Usually, there would be some over-ordering to ensure there is no shortage but for a dorm of ~10k, a 5% buffer means 500 boxes of food could potentially go to waste. Hopefully, as the operations stabilize, we can reduce the amount of wastage and maybe even direct some of the excesses to needy Singaporeans.

Swab test

Before the reservist ends, all of us had to undergo a swab test at the nearest polyclinics. The whole process from the time I entered the polyclinic until I left took <1hr. The staff generally had a sense of what needed to be done and the flow of people was good. For the actual test itself, a long stick would be stuck inside your nasal passage. Initially, only 1-2 inches went in and I thought that was it, but actually it was because the nurse took a while to find the correct passage. Once the whole stick was in, it was quite uncomfortable but thankfully it only lasted for a few seconds. Now I am awaiting the results of the swab test. Fingers crossed!

Overall I think this was one of the more meaningful reservist recalls I have had as I was able to directly contribute to the country's efforts to combat a global emergency. Am also very inspired by the hard work of other FAST officers, dorm operators and security teams to ensure things are running as smoothly as possible. Hoping this whole situation ends soon!