I remember being friends with a Bangladeshi migrant worker when I was a kid. OK, so not quite friends, but we’d regularly say “hi” and exchange a few words, both in halting English. My family had moved into a new housing estate in Singapore. There was still landscaping and minor construction work going on. I was allowed to roam freely around the estate (it was a different time then) and I got into all kinds of mischief with the neighbourhood kids. One of the top prizes for us kids was climbing on to these small tractors that the workers used to transport soil and sand in the front. We’d pretend to drive it when it was parked, cranking the gears and turning the steering wheel. But getting to ride on a moving tractor was a different thing altogether. I’m sure it was transparent to my friend that that was my real motivation for being friendly with him. I don’t remember his name, but to be fair, it has been three decades. What I’ve never forgotten, though, is how little he was paid for all the hard work he did under the hot sun: $23 a day. It did not occur to me then that he had helped to build the home I was living in with my family. And I didn’t understand what it meant to be living a world away from his family so he could build a better life for them. I was also unaware of any controversy over migrant workers. I hadn’t heard about unscrupulous middle men who cheat these workers into what is essentially indentured labour, or employers who force them to work dangerously long hours, refuse to pay what they’re due and abandon them when they get injured. What I did know, was that this man was a friend. Ours was not a deep or close friendship, but he always had a smile for me, no matter what heavy load he was carrying. And I saw him simply as another one of my friends in the estate.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 05:49:05 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015