Power, pride and prejudice

Source : Straits Times - 6 Sep 2008

LAST year Singaporeans objected to the dead being sited near them when people in Sin Ming estate protested against the building of a funeral parlour there.

This month they are objecting to the living. Serangoon Gardens residents are up in arms about foreign workers being housed in a vacant school building within the estate.

You can bet on it: ‘Not in my backyard!’ will be heard more frequently in Singapore in the coming years. With land already scarce and the population still growing, the contest for space can only get more intense.

Anecdotally, I have heard of protests against columbariums, kindergartens, car parks, childcare centres, playgrounds - necessary facilities all, just ‘not in my backyard’.

The real contest is however not about space. It is about power, pride and prejudice.

Power, because the ones most vocal in these protests and petitions tend to be middle-class folk, the socio-economic equals of their MPs and the bureaucrats who make decisions on siting of facilities.

Pride, because inherent in any group’s attempt to push some facility away to another part of Singapore is an implied statement that their area is superior and entitled to the right not to be encumbered with undesirable amenities - or what one blogger has called ‘disamenities’.

Prejudice, because underlying many of these protests are stated and unstated fears and assumptions.

In the Serangoon Gardens case, all three came together when residents got together to start a petition against turning the Serangoon Gardens Technical School building into a temporary dormitory for 1,000 foreign workers.

Serangoon Gardens is a staunchly middle-class estate that dates back half a century. Unlike nouveau riche middle-class Singaporeans, its residents are largely English-speaking and socially conservative.

Their spoken and unspoken fears: The foreign workers will litter, loiter, spit, steal, speak loudly, molest children and rob old people.

Founded or unfounded? We don’t really know.

Fears about littering and loitering may be founded, but who is to say that there are not segments of Singaporeans who litter and loiter on the same scale.

As for the other fears, the prejudging is probably excessive.

Foreigners who come to Singapore to work do so in search of a living. Few would be foolhardy enough to jeopardise their stay by breaking the law - which they well know is strictly enforced here and has a long arm.

True, there may be some who are driven to crimes by momentary temptations or fits of desperation. But this would be no less true of locals.

Most foreign workers are well-briefed by their employers and agents when they come to Singapore. Among other things, they are told not to be rowdy, not to get drunk, and not to cause unhappiness to the locals in any way.

Near where I live are a number of houses and apartments housing foreign workers, and I can tell that they are obeying the advice.

Their decorum is exemplary. When they get home, they open their main doors as soundlessly as possible. They try not to stare (imagine the super-human effort that must take). They even hang their laundry very neatly.

Some still litter, but I imagine they will kick that habit after a few more months here.

Serangoon Gardens residents voiced a concern about the values of their homes being reduced as a result of proximity to a foreign worker dormitory. With the property market already softening noticeably, that will happen, with or without the dormitory.

In any case, with an entire school building used as a dormitory, the facility can be self-contained. There can be recreational facilities within. The foreign workers need not be on the streets outside at all, save when travelling to work or going to the grocery shops.

To their credit, a number of the Serangoon Gardens residents who were at the dialogue with their MPs, Minister George Yeo and Senior Minister of State Lim Hwee Hua, prefaced their remarks by acknowledging the important role foreign workers play in Singapore.

But they went on nevertheless to list their concerns. Why?

Was it because they have led very sheltered lives? Ensconced for years in a middle-class cocoon, perhaps they genuinely fear the encroachment of more than a thousand foreign workers into their midst?

Perhaps they see visions of swarthy, moustachioed men breaking into their homes at night?

Whatever the case, these fears are probably disproportionate to the reality. The foreign workers, after all, are human beings too and probably have more fears about their stay in Singapore than we can ever imagine.

For a country that is predominantly a land of migrants, the xenophobia here can be astonishing.

One friend used a Chinese saying to describe these fears: guo qiao shao qiao. Burning the bridge after you have crossed it, so that no one can come across on it after you.

Will the residents who signed the petition get their way?

Some 1,600 have signed. The total number of households in the estate is however far higher - 4,000 to 7,000, depending on where you draw the boundary. So the petitioners are actually a minority.

The Government has been very careful in its approach to housing for foreign workers. It is releasing 11 new dormitory sites to house over 65,000 foreign workers, but their construction will be completed only in 2010.

In the meantime, it is looking at using vacant Government buildings, such as the former View Road Hospital building in Woodlands and recently tendered sites at Cochrane Crescent in Sembawang and in Changi East.

If it goes ahead, the Serangoon Gardens dorm will probably be the first large scale one in a landed residential estate. It will test the ability of middle-class Singaporeans to overcome prejudices and co-exist peacefully with working class foreigners. In today’s globalised world, this is a good ability to acquire.