What is it like living in an isolation area? With their phones, migrant workers take CNA Insider into their quarters, and talk about how they have ...
SINGAPORE: One by one, over the past week, Ponnu has seen his three room-mates falling sick. Now, he is the only one left in their isolation room.
Foreign workers stand along the corridor of their rooms in the S11 Dormitory @ Punggol in Singapore on Apr 6, 2020. For some other foreign workers, the anxiety comes in fleeting moments, amid the slow passage of time under isolation. “Everybody feels, the day, there’s nothing to do,” said Rashif, also from Westlite dorm. “Everybody’s on the phone. Without the phone, everybody has nothing to do.”When they had work, they were busy but their minds were “free”. Now, “the mind is totally stuck”, he tried to explain. “Same place, same thing, always continue.”
It was the same routine the next day, and by Friday, he could not stand being in his room any more. He admitted to sneaking out for a short while below his block within the compound, just to break into a run for exercise.Some of the workers get to stretch their legs along the dormitory corridors, as their rooms have no en suite toilet facilities.
READ: Singapore is paying 'close attention' to welfare of foreign workers amid COVID-19 outbreak: PM Lee Among the workers — mostly from Bangladesh — that CNA Insider spoke to over the phone and via video-conferencing, their rooms look clean. Plans are underway to relocate thousands of healthy workers from various dormitories to alternative facilities. Already, more than 5,000 of them in essential services have moved to sites like Singapore Armed Forces camps. From next week, they will also be housed at two floating accommodations.
But other than seeing the cleaning and disinfection of common areas being stepped up — to an average of three times a day, according to MOM — residents like Rashif say they are not clued in to some of these moves on the ground. The atmosphere there has since become surreal. “Everywhere is silent,” he described. “I feel stressed, but I can accept it. Because I think that's how animals — birds — stay in enclosed houses for a long time.”
A coalition of four groups — Citizen Adventures, Singapore Migrant Friends, ItsRainingRaincoats and MigrantxMe — is planning an online learning portal for the workers where Singaporeans can volunteer to share lessons, from languages to the arts.The group SDI Academy is even coming up with a mental health app on Android, called Linger.AI, by the end of the week. Besides health resources, it will also offer English lessons and a module on entrepreneurship.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
World seeks economic remedy as COVID-19 death toll mountsBRUSSELS: World powers scrambled on Thursday (Apr 9) to build a global response to the human and economic catastrophe caused by the COVID-19 ...
Read more »
Italy may relax some COVID-19 measures by end of April: PM ConteROME: Italy may start gradually lifting some restrictions in place to contain the new coronavirus by the end of April, provided the spread of the ...
Read more »
Italy's 'youngest patient' recovers from COVID-19: ReportsROME: A two-month-old baby who was believed to have been Italy's youngest COVID-19 patient has been released from hospital after overcoming the ...
Read more »
Paris neighbours ease COVID-19 lockdown blues with quiz from balconiesPARIS: 'What country's flag has a yellow cross on a blue background?' Noam Cartozo shouts out of the fifth-floor window of his Paris apartment.
Read more »
Covid-19: PM Lee hoping for positive results of ‘circuit breaker’ to show by April 17
Read more »