Review of Conditions in Migrant Worker Dormitories following Incident at Westlite Jalan Tukang Dormitory

31 Mr Pritam Singh asked the Minister for Manpower (a) why was a foreign embassy able to respond more quickly than the dormitory operator or the Ministry with the provision of aid and support to foreign workers residing at the Westlite Jalan Tukang Dormitory; (b) what acts can be ascribed to the dormitory operator or other stakeholders that resulted in the unsatisfactory conditions at the dormitory; and (c) whether there are sufficient resources deployed to ensure minimum standards of hygiene, food quality and medical support at all foreign worker dormitories in Singapore.

32 Mr Edward Chia Bing Hui asked the Minister for Manpower given the recent issues highlighted at the Westlite Jalan Tukang Dormitory, how will the Ministry be holding the dormitory operators and their corporate clients even more accountable for delivering an acceptable level of care to our foreign workers.

33 Mr Desmond Choo asked the Minister for Manpower (a) what are the findings on the allegations of poor living conditions at Westlite Dormitory at Jalan Tukang; (b) what actions has the Ministry taken to rectify the issues; and (c) what are the measures taken to prevent similar issues in other dormitories.

34 Mr Leong Mun Wai asked the Minister for Manpower (a) what is the overall vaccination rate for all dormitory residents; (b) what is the vaccination rate at the Westlite Jalan Tukang Dormitory; and (c) what proportion of Chinese workers living at the Westlite Jalan Tukang Dormitory have been vaccinated before they arrived in Singapore.

35 Mr Leong Mun Wai asked the Minister for Manpower (a) with regard to the Westlite Jalan Tukang Domitory, whether there is non-segregation of workers who tested positive for COVID-19, substandard quality of food provided and lack of access to medical support; and (b) if so, who will be held responsible for these lapses in the migrant workers’ living conditions.

36 Mr Dennis Tan Lip Fong asked the Minister for Manpower (a) what were the main reasons for the unhappiness of foreign workers at the Westlite Jalan Tukang Dormitory leading to the unrest on 12 October 2021; (b) what measures have since been taken by the Ministry to ensure that conditions have improved and that the previous conditions will not recur; and (c) whether any action will be taken against the dormitory operators, employers of the workers or service suppliers for any neglect or omission.

37 Mr Dennis Tan Lip Fong asked the Minister for Manpower (a) whether the Government will review its current stay-in requirements for workers in dormitories who are infected with COVID-19, bearing in mind that such accommodation typically requires a number of workers to live in close proximity when sharing dormitory rooms and common facilities like toilets, bathrooms and wash basins; and (b) whether such accommodation may allow for easier virus transmission as well as promoting anxiety and fear of infection among those sharing the same rooms.

38 Mr Gerald Giam Yean Song asked the Minister for Manpower (a) what are the reasons for the delays in isolation and treatment of COVID-19 infected workers, the extensive cross infection of workers, the serving of food unfit for consumption and the relatively low vaccination rate of workers at the Westlite Jalan Tukang dormitory; (b) what enforcement action will be taken against the operators, employers or food caterers; and (c) whether the Ministry has received and acted upon similar complaints from workers in other dormitories.

39 Mr Leon Perera asked the Minister for Manpower (a) what is being done to monitor and evaluate the quality of food catered for migrant workers, including nutritional value and cultural appropriateness, food hygiene and safety standards; (b) on average, what is the time gap between production and consumption of such food; and (c) what enforcement actions have been taken against employers who fail to comply with the requisite food standards.

The Senior Minister of State for Manpower (Dr Koh Poh Koon) (for the Minister for Manpower): Mr Speaker, Sir, several Members have filed questions relating to the situation at Westlite Jalan Tukang Dormitory and with your permission, Sir, may I ask to take Question Nos 31 to 39 together, please?

Mr Speaker: Yes, please.

Dr Koh Poh Koon: Let me first explain the healthcare and recovery protocol for the dormitory residents to set the context. In line with the shift to the Home Recovery Programme in our community, the dormitories have phased in a Dormitory Recovery Programme since 2 October in the transition towards "living with COVID-19". Ninety-eight percent of dormitory residents are fully vaccinated and most are below the age of 60. A vast majority of recent infections are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic.

Forty-five larger dormitories now have dedicated blocks or rooms set aside within their compounds as Dormitory Recovery Facilities (DRFs). COVID-19-positive vaccinated workers who are asymptomatic or only mildly symptomatic can recuperate and be monitored in DRFs while being segregated from other workers. Additionally, we have set up three Centralised Recovery Facilities (CRFs) in the larger dormitories to cater for workers who do not have access to the 45 DRFs. The 45 DRFs and three CRFs together have a total of 11,000 recovery beds. We will expand these recovery capacities if needed.

We have also aligned testing protocols in the DRFs and CRFs with the rest of our community. Workers who test negative on their supervised Antigen Rapid Tests (ARTs) after 72 hours of isolation can be discharged. Workers are given thermometers and oximeters to monitor themselves three times a day and report these numbers. A recovery buddy is designated in each room to help with the dissemination of information and to monitor the health of fellow migrant workers. The dormitory operator also checks on them regularly.

So far, over 17,000 workers have gone through the Dormitory Recovery Programme and have safely recovered. The majority were discharged by Day 7 and about half of them were discharged by Day 4. The small minority who developed symptoms continued to have access to medical support through daily sick parades at our regional medical centres or telemedicine consultations which are available 24/7. Mobile Clinical Teams may also be deployed to DRFs or CRFs with high report sick rate to augment access to primary care. In fact, fewer than 0.2% needed to be admitted to the hospital.

The workers appreciate the convenience of dormitory recovery since they can return quickly to their rooms on discharge and resume work very rapidly.

Let me now give an account of the events at Westlite Jalan Tukang Dormitory. This dormitory has about 3,000 residents. About half of them are employed by Sembcorp Marine and almost all of them are newly arrived workers from China in the last three to four months. These workers were offered vaccination under our national vaccination programme, with a small number taking it up. The employer has since clarified that these workers had been vaccinated in their home country before arriving in Singapore. The vaccination status of these workers needed to be verified through a serology test and WHO-EUL vaccination documentation before we can register them as being vaccinated in Singapore. MOM has been working with the employer to expedite the verification. Progress has been made. To date, about 60% of the Sembcorp Marine workers have been verified to have received WHO-EUL-approved vaccines, while a number have not been vaccinated with WHO-EUL vaccines and we encourage them to be vaccinated in Singapore for their own protection.

Following the implementation of the Dormitory Recovery Programme on 2 October, the dormitory operator began adjusting to these new protocols. On 10 October, there were 174 newly detected Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) and Antigen Rapid Test (ART) positive cases. However, the dormitory operator had difficulty processing the sudden surge of workers that needed to be conveyed. The next day, on 11 October, some key members of the dormitory staff did not come to work as they themselves had tested positive. The Assurance, Care and Engagement Group or ACE officers on the ground stepped in on that day to assist the operator.

In response to the sharp increase in the number of COVID-19 cases on 10 October, Sembcorp Marine and ACE carried out a mass testing exercise on 12 October at the worksite and dormitory which yielded another 278 COVID-19-positive cases that needed to be conveyed from the dormitory to a CRF if they were vaccinated, or to another appropriate isolation facility if they were unvaccinated. This happened while the team was trying to process the previous surge, and the dormitory operator struggled to process the high volume. While ACE officers tried to assist the operator between 11 and 12 October, it, too, did not put in enough resources during this time to triage, process and convey the COVID-19-positive workers before the second surge on 13 October.

Sir, following the incident on 13 October, ACE took swift actions since that afternoon to stabilise the situation.

First, we doubled the number of officers to manage the conveyance of all infected workers from the dormitory such that, by the evening of 13 October, about 70% of the workers needing conveyance had been sent to the appropriate recovery or isolation facilities. By the next day, on 14 October, the backlog was cleared.

In addition, ACE officers, together with the employer and dormitory operator, engaged the workers and assured them that their feedback would be looked into and there would be timely conveyance of infected individuals. The workers calmed down and returned to their rooms.

ACE also deployed a mobile clinical team to the dormitory to augment the existing medical services that were already available to the residents at Westlite Jalan Tukang Dormitory through the regional medical centres and telemedicine. All those who wanted to seek medical attention were seen by the medical team on site on the same day. This helped to reduce the waiting time and allay much of the fears and anxieties that the workers experienced.

The situation has been calm in the dormitory since 13 October. Over the following days and weeks, ACE officers, together with the employer and dormitory operator, continued to be at the dormitory every day to engage the workers. In fact, over the last two weeks, ACE has introduced more videos and infographics to better explain Singapore’s strategy for dealing with COVID-19 and the recovery process in our dormitories, in view that the newly-arrived workers at the dormitory were used to a different COVID-19 management strategy in their home country. In particular, there are now videos of migrant workers sharing their recovery journey and assuring their fellow migrant workers, as well as videos of doctors answering common questions from migrant workers in their own native languages.

So, I urge employers and dormitory operators to do more to help our workers adjust to the new normal, communicate changes that will affect workers’ well-being and actively address potential knowledge gaps of their workers and residents. We also call on workers who are not vaccinated or not verified – if they are vaccinated overseas – to complete their vaccination or verification as soon as possible as this will protect them from serious illnesses. MOM and sector agencies will monitor this progress.

We also saw many of our partners coming in to support the workers after the incident on 13 October. We are very grateful and encouraged by the outpouring of support by the Chinese business community, the Chinese Embassy, NGOs like HealthServe, Migrant Workers' Centre and the wider community. This is testimony to the civic-mindedness and big-heartedness of our community here in Singapore. Thank you so much for your help!

This is similar to how, at the height of the pandemic last year, MOM worked with the High Commissions of India and of Bangladesh, as well as various NGOs to support our migrant workers, including celebrating festive occasions with them. We thank all parties for their contributions and donations, and we will continue to work together to care for our migrant workers.

Workers also raised concerns about the quality and hygiene standards of food provided by Sembcorp Marine. We take this very seriously and have asked the employer to address the complaints. The employer has reported that they have made improvements to the food and the feedback from the workers has been positive. The Ministry will not hesitate to take actions against any errant employer who fails to ensure workers' access to safe food. The Singapore Food Agency is also investigating the food safety practices of this particular caterer.

Sir, in summary, there were shortcomings by all parties. On the employer's part, workers were upset and had raised issues about food quality and hygiene. On the dormitory operator's part, they struggled to cope with the surge in numbers. On ACE's part, we stepped in but did not put in sufficient resources in time to resolve the problem.

Following the incident, all parties have diligently addressed the issues, restored calm to the dormitory and to the workers. We have also conducted a thorough review and tightened up the processes, especially for escalating and calling in more resources to deal with a surge in cases that need to be conveyed. ACE has also tightened up coordination and communication with dormitory operators and employers when handling mass testing exercises and a surge in cases. Investigations into failures to fulfil regulatory obligations, for example, in food safety and hygiene issues, are ongoing.

All parties across our more than 1,300 dormitories, whether it is dormitory operators, employers and ACE officers on the ground, play important roles to support the recovery of our migrant workers. More than 17,000 migrant workers have recovered under the Dormitory Recovery Programme with the support and hard work of all these partners. We will learn from this episode and continue to strengthen the partnership with all stakeholders and community partners to ensure the well-being of our migrant workers as we transit into endemicity.

Mr Speaker: Mr Pritam Singh.

Mr Pritam Singh (Aljunied): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I would like to thank the Senior Minister of State for his comprehensive reply to my Parliamentary Question (PQ). I have a question pertaining to MOM's ACE Group, which was a new division set up last year, taking over from the inter-agency task force, and it pertains to the deployment of forward assurance and support teams. It would appear from the Senior Minister of State's chronology that, between 10 and 12 October, there were gaps. Can I seek confirmation from the Senior Minister of State as to the manpower situation within ACE itself, whether there are enough individuals and teams to cover not just this particular dormitory but the vast number of dormitories in Singapore?

My second question pertains to the first part of what the Senior Minister of State shared with regard to the Dormitory Recovery Programme. I would like to seek an update from the Senior Minister of State as to what is the situation with the various pilots that I believe were launched to allow workers to reintegrate into the public space and whether this can actually be moved along in a more deliberate manner. I understand from individuals in HealthServe that mental health concerns are becoming more noteworthy.

Dr Koh Poh Koon: Sir, the Member asked two questions. The first one is on whether we have enough ACE officers to cover the number of dormitories we have. The reality is that we have 1,300 dormitories, big and small. There will never be enough to go around on a regular basis, to plant people in all 1,300 dormitories. How we go about doing this is to leverage the partnership we have with our stakeholders: the dormitory operators, the employers and, of course, we have volunteers within the migrant worker community, the friends of ACE, where they are also ambassadors, where they are migrant workers themselves who have been here for some time. They are trained and equipped with some of the basic knowledge to share information with their fellow workers, to help spread the message and also to help to collate feedback and channel this upwards to all of us. So, in a way, it is about leveraging the multiplier effect of everyone pitching their hands in and working together.

As the Member will appreciate, to have operations within 1,300 dormitories, big and small, with different phases perhaps of infection, of liberalisation of going to the community or going to work. The work necessary to coordinate across all the different stakeholders as well as to ensure that when a case is detected; documentation of the COVID-19-positive result; churning out a nominal roll, a name list; communicating the need for conveyance and then for the team to arrange for the necessary transportation; having also the receiving party at the other end, at the dormitory recovery facilities (DRFs) or the centralised recovery facilities (CRFs), for example, is a necessary complex process that involves quite a bit of communication and coordination.

So, we do make sure that our ACE officers are prioritised in terms of going to the dormitories that need help rather than have them spread thin over all the many places. In a way, it is about risk-strategising and prioritisation. At this moment, we are working with what we have. When there is a need to, if there is a real major surge in demand that we need to augment our numbers, we will look at increasing the number of ACE officers that we need to deploy.

The second question pertains to how much more we can do in liberalising community visits for our dormitory workers. I must say that our dormitory workers have been very, very patient and they have actually gone through a lot in the last one and a half years or so.

In the past month or so, we have started a community pilot: visits for workers to go into the community. We started with about 500 and then, with the success of that pilot, you will see in today's newspaper that an announcement has been made over the weekend. Minister Tan See Leng himself visited one of the Hindu temples with many of our migrant workers. And we are going to increase that number to 3,000 workers a week, especially with this festivity of Deepavali coming along, many of them will be looking forward to community visits as well.

Progressively, as we stabilise the dormitory recovery process, as the community also gets adjusted to Home Recovery Programme, as we move more and more into the endemic state, I believe that we can gradually reopen with a lot more numbers to allow our workers to access more community facilities.

We are also liberalising the number of times our vaccinated workers in the dormitories can go to the recreation centres as well. So, there are less restrictions going to recreation centres. That, again, offers another outlet for them to access services, to also have the necessary interactions that they need at the recreation centres, on top of the community visits that we are liberalising.

Mr Speaker: Mr Desmond Choo.

Mr Desmond Choo (Tampines): Thank you to the Senior Minister of State. I have two supplementary questions. The first one is, MWC has been working with MOM to help the management of dormitories. For this particular incident, why were the other agencies or NGOs not brought on board to support ACE for that few days? Is it linked to certain critical priorities that MOM might have?

The other supplementary question is on the vaccination of these workers. I know there is a requirement to bring in only vaccinated workers. So, in this instance, why were certain numbers of workers not vaccinated? How can we prevent and enhance the arrival of such unvaccinated workers for future batches?

Dr Koh Poh Koon: Mr Speaker, I thank Mr Desmond Choo for these two questions. On the first question relating to why the NGOs were not brought in earlier, let me explain that when the surge in cases occurred, the topmost priority in the minds of our ACE officers who went in on 9 and 10 October was to augment the dorm operators, the topmost priority was really to do the processing and to do the triaging of those who may have need for medical care. On 9 October, a mobile clinical team was deployed onsite to help cope with the load of increased number of residents who might need medical attention or seek consultation. So, the priority there was very clear. It is about making sure that our team on the ground focused on what is the most urgent need and that was to take care of the medical conditions – make sure they are well, make sure they are safe medically, first.

The next priority then was to ensure that we can stitch the logistics together and make sure there is enough conveyancing capacity to bring these workers to the necessary isolation facilities.

That situation with COVID-19 cases going up in the dorm, it would not be appropriate to allow NGOs to be exposed to the risk of infection in a dorm like this. Because the work then was about medical care, was about conveyancing. It is not necessarily something that the NGOs have the capability to provide as well.

Therefore, that is the reason why in the first few days, our ACE officers were working with resources we have with the dorm operators to make sure that these important needs are met.

When the situation had calmed down – after 13 October, by that night, as I said, 70% had been conveyed; and by the next morning, by 14 October, all the rest of the backlog had been cleared – this was when the rest of the NGOs came in. In fact, the Embassy came in only on 14 October, for example, to also provide some of these supplies like masks, hand sanitisers. These were useful as a psychological boost for our workers; but by themselves, they would not be able to address the medical needs. So, it is quite clear from the sequence of events, the team was on the ground early on to try and manage the medical situation.

As to the second question of why there were so many so-called unvaccinated workers coming to Singapore, you must remember that this happened when the workers came in three, four months ago. The earlier batches came in at about mid-July and then, another bulk of them came in at around August. At that time, we were still in the "zero COVID-19" situation. We were trying to contain the numbers., but we had imposed Not to Land (NTL) on some of the high-risk countries. For low-risk countries, we did not impose NTL for them. China is one of those countries where they have very low COVID-19 numbers and we did not impose NTL on China workers coming in at that time.

At that time also, our dorms were not into the endemic posture, and so, even if the workers turned out not to be vaccinated, there was a way to keep them safe. But in this process, by October, we were transiting to more of an endemic posture. Those workers, who came in earlier on when we were still pursuing a zero-COVID-19 type of strategy, were therefore caught in that transition if their vaccination status was not up to the mark in terms of personal protection.

That is why we are encouraging both the workers and employers to get this thing sorted out as soon as possible and for those who are yet to be vaccinated, to get them vaccinated.

Members would also have read from our previous announcement that from today, 1 November onwards, only work pass holders who are fully vaccinated will be allowed to enter Singapore for work. This would be an adjustment that we are making from today onwards, in line with our endemic posture to make sure that anybody who is applying for a work pass, we make sure that they are vaccinated before allowing them to come in.

So, this is a gap that will gradually narrow over time. We are now digesting the group of people who came in just before that, who may then have a certain vaccination gap that we need to fill.

Mr Speaker: Mr Leon Perera.

Mr Leon Perera (Aljunied): Thank you, Mr Speaker, Sir. I thank the Senior Minister of State for his answers. I have two supplementary questions just on food quality. I know SFA is investigating the food quality claims around this particular incident. But in general, on food quality for migrant workers, there have been concerns about this going back for years. There was a survey, for example, in 2015, that talked about how the majority of workers felt the food was unsatisfactory, unclean and so on. There have been improvements since then.

Two questions. Firstly, SFA has regulations that govern the quality of catered food supplied locally to Singaporeans and I know there were revisions to these rules in March 2020 to require food establishments providing catering services, to have CCTVs to keep retention samples of the food and so on. So, do those SFA guidelines for catered food supplied to Singaporeans also apply to catered food supplied to migrant workers? Is that applicable, is that enforced?

Secondly, what is being done, in general, to look at the standards of food supplied to migrant workers beyond just the Jalan Tukang incident; in particular, around what you hear and frequent reports about the food being prepared the day before and there can be a long period of time that elapses between when the food is prepared and when it is consumed by the migrant workers?

Dr Koh Poh Koon: Sir, I do not know how the Member can get the feedback from these workers for years and years when they all just arrived in July this year. So, I am not sure whether such a claim is absolutely correct that this complaint has been going on for years and years. These workers have been here for less than four months.

Regulations that apply to dorm caterers, yes, I think it is a standard that we apply across to all catering, whether it is to the dorms or for other public consumption.

Regarding feedback for standards of food hygiene, there are various avenues in which the workers can feed back. First, we have now the FWMOMCare app, which is an app that all foreign workers can download onto their smart phones. Through this app, they can feedback directly to MOM, to ACE, for example, on any issues relating to their dorm conditions, including food. So, that is something through which workers have direct access to our agencies. The second thing is that there are volunteer groups, NGOs who are in regular contact with our workers – what we call Friends of ACE – when they are organising activities, when they interact with the workers, this is again another channel of feedback.

I must say our NGOs are very, very much pro-workers. They will not hesitate to tell us when there is any feedback that they receive regarding sub-standard accommodation or food.

The third is that the Migrant Workers' Centre (MWC) has established a network of what we call Migrant Worker Ambassadors who are scattered throughout all the different dormitories. These are foreign workers themselves, staying in the dormitories, who have been here in Singapore for many years; some of them, even for a decade. They are quite familiar with the setting, they are quite familiar with the standards that are to be expected on a day-to-day basis and they again, form another channel of feedback to the relevant authorities and to the NGOs as well, if standards were to drop.

The final one is that MWC runs a hotline where all foreign workers who face challenges and they cannot get through to the employers or to anyone else, can call this hotline where they can directly give feedback to MWC as well as the ambassadors who speak their native languages to collate all the feedback.

So, I think there is no shortage of feedback. Clearly, some of these things, if there were language barriers, we need to look into that. In this case, I think they were very much newly arrived workers, they may not be exactly familiar with many of these resources opened to them. This is where we need to communicate to them that there are avenues they can seek redress from. We will also take this chance to impress on all employers that it is their responsibility and their obligation to make sure that they provide food of decent quality and hygiene standard that their workers can consume.

If there are investigations that show that employers have actually violated any of these obligations, we will take them to task.