Singapore is a small country which is limited both in land area and domestic workforce. Due to its small geographic size of 718 square kilometres, she cannot rely on natural resources for her economy, unlike larger neighbours such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. Thus, Singapore has to depend heavily on her human capital for growth and progress. Due to rapid economic expansion and the limited domestic workforce available, historically Singapore has always relied on foreign labour to augment her workforce.
The reliance on foreign labour is further entrenched by the improving education level of Singaporeans. In order to have quality local human capital, quality local education is essential. As a result of her focus to achieve a world class education system, more Singaporeans are becoming better educated. In 2012, more than 70 per cent of Singapore residents aged 25-34 years (who were not currently formally studying) were tertiary educated, as compared to only less than 20 per cent among those above 60 years of age. With better education, less younger Singaporeans are taking up lower-skilled jobs with poorer remunerations. In order to continue filling the ranks of lower-skilled workers, Singapore has to draw from the pool of labour overseas.
Singapore classifies its foreign workforce according to their skill set and are issued different employment documents accordingly. For foreign domestic workers and semi-skilled or unskilled foreign workers, they are issued work permits and are classified as work permit holders. As of December 2014, there were 991,300 work permit holders in Singapore, of which 222,500 were foreign domestic workers and 322,700 were construction workers. In total, work permit holders make up about 18% of the population residing in Singapore.
The Population White Paper of 2013 recognises that lower-skilled foreign workers complement the resident workforce by supporting higher-tier professional jobs held by Singaporeans. It also states that having foreign workers working in Singapore help create work opportunities for locals and provides them a cushion from unemployment during economic downturns. The Singapore Government's website states that the majority of foreign workers in Singapore are there to "help build our homes, keep our roads clean, and make [Singaporean] lives just a little more comfortable." The government portrays the ultimate role of the lower-skilled foreign workers as one of serving the interests of the locals.
Many Singaporeans have expressed their dissatisfaction at the rapid increase in the number of foreign workers in Singapore over the recent years, due to inconveniences they experience as a result of a bloating population. This unhappiness has been made known through protest rallies held by those who oppose the government’s immigration policy. For the lower-skilled foreign workers, the unhappiness of the local population compounds the existing social prejudices against their ethnicity and low social standing.
Apart from the negative sentiments of the locals, many lower-skilled foreign workers also need to face with less-than-ideal conditions of life. Foreign construction workers work in higher-risk environments with long working hours and poor remuneration. Many have to put up with errant employers refusing them proper work injury compensation, witholding them salary, and abusing them, because having paid exorbitant fees to their agents to be sent to Singapore, they need to keep working to recoup their initial financial losses and accumulate savings.
Many cases of foreign domestic workers being physically abused by their employers have also regularly surfaced in the media, and these workers only seek help after repeated abuses because they are unsure of their rights and are afraid of being sent back home. The negativity of the locals towards them and their subserviency to the interests of the locals, as well as being strangers in a foreign land, lead to their vulnerability to exploitation by employers. Thus, being in a compromising circumstance, lower-skilled foreign workers in Singapore may be considered a vulnerable group in society.
Christians in Singapore cannot commit to a negative, exploitative attitude toward the lower-skilled foreign workers. Rather they should view and treat lower-skilled foreign workers in a Biblical manner that is radically different from prevailing sentiments in society, that is to see them as fellow creatures created in the image of God, and to love them as their neighbour by being concerned at the unfair hardships and injusticies they face while seeking employment opportunities in Singapore. The Old Testament is full of injunctions and ruminations about foreign workers in the land of Israel, and God continues his concern for this vulnerable group in the New Testament through Jesus’ exhortations.
In the injunctions of the Mosaic law, there are provisions being made for a seperate class of people living in Israel called the “sojourners” (ESV) or “ger” (Hebrew). God commands the Israelites not to opress or abhor sojourners but love them because they were once sojourners in the land of Egypt (Ex 23:9; Deut 10:18-19; 23:7). Most of these sojourners likely provided lower-skilled labour to Israel (1Chr22:2) and were among the vulnerable and needy groups in Israelite society (Lev 19:10; 23:22; Deut 10:18; 16:11, 14; 24:17). They are portrayed in the legal provisions as a minority group of people – along with the widows and the fatherless – likely to face discrimination and injustices from the rest of society. To be in a foreign land filled with apathetic people, and equipped with little understanding of the local language and laws renders a sojourner helpless when faced with trouble. This is not unlike the situation faced by the lower-skilled foreign workers in Singapore.
While the sojourners in Israel are subject to the same laws as the Israelites (Num 15:15-16), special provisions are made for them in the legal statutes (Deut 24:19-21), and the Israelites are repeatedly reminded by God not to dispise or mistreat them. Such special provisions show that God recognizes the potential injustices these aliens might face in the land of Israel at the hand of the citizens, because he is omnisciently cognizant of the fact that the sinfulness of man and brokenness of human relationships will manifest itself in such a way.
More importantly, these provisions show that he is a God of love, who loves both the Israelite and the sojourner, whose justice is impartial to both Jews and Gentile. It is significant that as Judah faced her final foreign invasion, one of the charges laid by God against her which incurred his wrath, was the ill-treatment of the sojourner (Eze 22:7). As the people of God, Christians in Singapore need to know that God loves the lower-skilled foreign workers in our midst, and be aware that the sinfulness of man as manifested in social prejudices will result in a dehumanising mistreatment of them. Thus, they should reject the prevailing prejudices and be spurred by the love of God to relate to and treat the lower-skilled foreign workers in a manner that is delightful to him.
Jesus goes further in his proscription to his disciples and his audience in the tenth chapter of the Gospel of Luke. When challenged by a Jewish religious expert on who is his neighbour that he should show love to, Jesus tells the famous parable of the good Samaritan. In the parable, a Samaritan goes out of his way to help a person, presumably a Jew, who was travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho, but ended up being beaten, robbed, left for dead, and callously ignored by fellow Jews who were in the religious office.
Samaritans were a people group descended from Israelites who intermarried with pagans after the northern kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians, and the king of Assyria resettled pagans amongst the Israelites who remained in Samaria. They were considered to be ethnically distinct from the Jews and disdained by them, and the two groups had often come into conflict with each other during the first century AD.
However, Jesus tells an incredulous tale (to the Jews) of a much disdained Samaritan offering help to a Jew when other supposedly pious Jews refused to, so as to inform the audience that the love for the other is not constrained by religion and ethnicity, but transcends both. A Samaritan can show love to a Jew, and so should a Jew show love to a Samaritan. It is only when we love and show mercy to the other, that we prove ourselves to be a neighbour to the other.
The recent news of two foreign construction workers risking their safety to rescue a toddler in danger of falling off a second storey apartment is a contemporary “good Samaritan” story set in a Singaporean context. This incident should be a rebuke to any Singaporean holding prejudices toward lower-skilled foreign workers.
For Christians, the love of God has to compel them not only to change their attitudes toward them, but to seek for their justice and welfare in tangible means. It is not enough to merely ‘say to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body’ (Jas 2:16), but changes in attitudes should also be accompanied by deeds. Such deeds should be done even at the expense of our own comfort. In so doing, God’s love for the stranger in our midst is tangibly shared, and through these social action, a platform for the good news of Jesus Christ to be told is created.
Despite social prejudices toward them, less-than-ideal work and living conditions and a meagre remuneration (relative to the locals), Singapore remains a popular destination for lower-skilled foreign workers. With the continued reliance on foreign labour for construction and domestic help, the influx of foreign workers is likely to continue into the far future. As some return home with earnings in hand, others will take their place. Christians in Singapore need to take an initiative to make their country a better place for them work in, and provide help for those who have fallen through the little of what social security they have in a foreign land. In so doing they will prove themselves to be people of God, and salt and light of the world.
Png Eng Keat
STEP 2015
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