Why Treat Them Like Lepers?

This letter by S. Murali was published in The New Paper on October 24, 2008.

ALL RIGHT, here we go again.

Bright ideas to house foreign workers:

Put them on a floating platform, or perhaps a floating island.

Build separate roads for them. Provide them with their own shops, so that they don't have to mingle with the rest of us.

Hey, why stop there?

Why not dig underground and build them some tunnels to live in?

Better still, to save cost, just build extensions to existing MRT tunnelling.

Then we won't have to look at these workers at all, only when they come up for air and to do our dirty work.

Are you people listening to yourselves?

These are HUMAN BEINGS we are talking about.

Some of you won't even treat your precious pets this way. Is this what it means to become a 'first world' nation?

That you treat everyone else from the 'third world' like lepers?

I'm sorry, but some of the ideas that have been 'floated' on this issue make me nauseous.

Get off my sky-high horse and provide solutions, you say?

Here's a novel idea: Let them live amongst us.

Build good quality dorms in housing estates, so that they can get a good night's sleep and still be near amenities such as shops and post offices.

How would I like it if they built a dorm next to my house? Come do, I say.

There is an open field in front of my house at Block 261, Bishan Street 22, which is earmarked as a possible site to build another condominium.

Build a dorm there.

Could there be inconveniences to me and the others living there, as a result? Sure.

More people in a small area is a hassle.

But it is people that we are talking about here.

And I am okay with people.

It's bigots that I have a problem with.