Considering the SG expatriates, there are several classes.

The lowest rung in terms of respect and entitlement are the manual labourers. In the mornings, I will see them arrive by open-backed truck, lined up outside the construction site, photographed, recorded, reported, clocked in etc when I take my constitutional around 7 am.

For the most part, they look dejected and tatty but also reconciled to the fact that at least they have a job which may be a better situation than if they were back in their home country.

Most appear to be of South Asian origin, so India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Burma perhaps?

Many are housed and fed in barrack-like dormitories run by their sponsoring agencies or employers. Some, slightly higher up the food chain than others might be sharing accommodation in Housing Development Board (HDB) style apartment/flat properties like high density or community housing projects blocks.

Some even live in houses, as I have observed in my walks. You see them working all hours of the day cutting grass, trimming trees, driving heavy equipment, digging holes, mending pipes, painting, sweeping – pretty much any day of the week.

They’ll congregate in places like Little India’s hawker food courts, Bugis malls and other ethnic food-friendly places during their down-time. You’ll also find strong communities of Filipinos at Lucky Plaza on Orchard Road and communities of Burmese from Myanmar and other East Asian ethnicities in the vicinity of the Funan Centre and the Peninsula Excelsior Shopping Centre. They’re all of the ‘foreign worker’ class.

Domestic workers

Next up you’ll find the domestic servants, housekeepers, nannies, maids, houseboys, butlers etc.

In recent news, it has been revealed to me that often they will exchange their ‘days off’ for cash or pay, which they will presumably save or send home because there is not much that they can afford or are inclined to do on those days off. The authorities have decided that they should be entitled to at least one day off every month that cannot be exchanged for cash. This has met with mixed emotions from domestic employers it seems.

From living circumstances, some will occupy purpose-designed domestic quarters, others will occupy a room in a condominium or HDB and still, others will be jammed into the bomb shelter or adjoining laundry room that often accompanies an HDB or Condo. One gets that sense that for some employers if they could get away with having these poor would sleep on the balcony, they would!

A former colleague for example, who had been in SG for a number of years, went to great pains to find a new employer for her domestic but had one criterion. Namely, that the domestic had to have a proper room with a window, not a 6 foot by 10-foot windowless bomb shelter or laundry room off the kitchen. For some, this might have seemed too much of an ask, but such is the lot of the foreign worker, someone has to fight for their rights and if it isn’t going to be the authorities, it has to be someone whose opinions will be recognised because it seems clear that theirs are not considered.

They’re viewed by some, as needing to simply be more grateful.

These foreign workers will congregate at the parks or in the streets and those same malls, with either their shopping dollies, wards or pets in two despite the oppressive heat and high humidity levels. It is ironic that they raise the children, inculcate values, disposition, personality and respect in the spawn of the elite and not so elite and yet are treated in an appalling way in some cases. On more than one occasion we have seen a petulant tween speak disrespectfully to his or her handler and can only assume that this is a learned behaviour from the parents. All rather disappointing.

On other occasions, we’ve observed children being spoken to or speaking Filipino or Bahasa to their carers which has ultimately demonstrated itself to be quite endearing and charming.

The skilled worker

The last couple of categories are office and retail workers, skilled workers and executives. These come from all corners of the world but they’re in a different class and breed to the more menial yet equally important lower-tier positions.

The reality though, is that these positions straddle a very contentious set of places in the job market. Why would you hire a baker from say Sri Lanka when you could train a local to be a baker and have them be a baker instead? Why would you recruit a front of house receptionist for your hotel when an SG school graduate could do the job? It’s tricky.

A friend in the hotel trade suggests that they’re having a tough time finding suitably qualified local staff, those that are, are snapped up quickly for premium dollars.

Executives, particularly of foreign parent companies will likely always be brought in from abroad and those that are sourced locally will be also snapped up and job hop continuously until they are promoted into the outer atmosphere where they become less effective and frustrated and probably eventually quit and start their own businesses. The SG executive job market however is in a state of crisis. Rumours are plentiful and suggest that mass departures are underway at the moment. This is an interesting position because for every expatriate exec in SG I am pretty sure that there are half a dozen or more prospective foreign candidates who are interested in applying for the position. I don’t see there ever being a shortage of foreigners wanting to work in SG, as long as the authorities will let them in. The latter has been one of the reasons for the mass departures. You can leave, but the authorities don’t guarantee to let you back in due to concerns about you bring the COVID-19 virus with you.

On this topic of local hiring, I am reminded of the following.

One of the things my grandmother (and father) told me about my grandfather, was that when he finally left Malaya in about 1935 it was with the knowledge that he had left a team of industrial chemists and metallurgists who were locals and fully capable of doing the job that needed to be done. He jokingly described himself as having trained his team out of a job for himself.

Now, that might well have been a romantic view that he had of himself and his role in colonial Malaya and Singapore but it is one that I like. I also like to think that the team I left behind me in Saudi, of Saudi nationals, hopefully, learned something from me, and that I left them in a more empowered and knowledgeable position than they were when I started. I guess I will never know the real answer to either.