Efforts to Care for Migrant Workers' Mental Well-being and Allow for Measured Access to Facilities Beyond their Dormitories

74 Mr Desmond Choo asked the Minister for Manpower in respect of migrant workers who have been restricted from going into the community since the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic (a) what are the Ministry's efforts to care for their welfare and mental well-being; and (b) what are the future plans to allow for their measured and safe access to facilities beyond their dormitories.

Mrs Josephine Teo: MOM has a range of measures to support the migrant workers’ recreational and welfare needs while ensuring that they stay safe and the risk of infection in the dormitories is kept low.

MOM has increased migrant workers’ opportunities to visit recreation centres to three times a week and increased the time allocated for each visit to four hours. Migrant workers may also combine their visit slots for the visit. We have re-opened in-dorm communal facilities such as communal kitchens and sporting facilities. We have also worked with various partners to facilitate outings to places of interest for migrant workers. We also keep our migrant workers updated on the latest COVID-19 measures and information regularly through our bulletins on FWMOMCare App.

We have made mental healthcare more accessible. To this end, we set up a multi-stakeholder taskforce called Project DAWN since November last year, comprising representatives from MOM, Government psychologists, the Institute of Mental Health (IMH), and two Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) – the Migrant Workers’ Centre (MWC) and HealthServe. Project DAWN seeks to develop and implement a comprehensive support ecosystem to manage the mental health of migrant workers. We have started putting our plans into action. Our NGO partners provide counselling services in our migrant workers’ native languages. We have also shared mental health resources, including the dissemination of helplines posters to all dormitories to act as visual cues and reminders.

Second, we have strengthened frontline support. IMH has trained close to a core of 50 frontline medical professionals to identify and offer care to workers who may require mental health interventions. Our ACE Group’s Forward Assurance and Support Teams (FAST) are also trained to identify and administer psychological first aid to distressed workers. Third, we have enhanced the support eco-system for migrant workers. To date, we have trained close to 100 migrant workers as peer support leaders in some dormitories and will be implementing this at another 300 dormitories. We aim to have 600 peer support leaders by the end of 2022. Employers and dormitory operators have also received advisories asking them to keep a look-out for their workers and encouraging the formation of a buddy system at work and in communal living.

The recent cases at Westlite Woodlands and SCM Tuas Lodge reinforce the need for us to ease restrictions in a safe, gradual and calibrated manner. We have tightened measures such as Safe Management Measures at RCs and suspended visits to the RCs for the affected dormitories to prevent the spread of COVID-19 beyond the affected dormitories. When we enforce restrictions within the dormitories, our FAST are also on the ground to reassure the affected workers and ensure that their salaries, benefits and welfare are also taken care of. When the number of cases in dormitories remain very low for a period of time, migrant workers will be allowed to visit the community in controlled numbers once a month. When a large majority of dormitory residents are vaccinated and the risk of transmission in dormitories is greatly reduced, we can ease restrictions further.