Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers. I called my mum this morning to wish her well. We haven’t seen each other since CNY as she lives in Singapore with my younger brother. She finds living in Singapore to be better for her, as her two sisters are Singaporeans. Mum is well and relatively happy, and staying indoors.
I also caught up some news on Singapore. Singapore is still in full lockdown with no relaxation of movement restrictions. Unlike Malaysia, all malls are still closed. People are working from home. The government is heavily subsidising wages. Their construction industry (which relies heavily on migrant workers) remained closed.
Singapore is reporting about 700 cases of Covid-19 every day for the last week. Almost all infections are from the migrant workers community. This constant high number seems to suggest a limit to their testing capabilities and that these workers may have been overlooked by the government at the start of the pandemic.
My Singaporean friends tell me that a very unusual sight is the public landscaping is getting very shoddy, with grasses overgrown and shrubs untrimmed.
The Singapore experience with migrant workers should be a major indicator and concern for Malaysia. Singapore has 300,000 migrant workers, in comparison we have an estimated 6 million of both legal and illegal migrant workers. Are we up to scratch on mass testing and are our data even truly reliable? Are we doing enough to stop the Covid-19 spread amongst our migrant workers?