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Health, not just safety, of foreign workers important

I refer to the letter “Workplace safety above all else” (Sept 5, online).

An anti-mosquito-breeding banner outside a construction site. The letter writer believes people need to be on high alert from the start to prevent mosquito breeding. TODAY file photo

An anti-mosquito-breeding banner outside a construction site. The letter writer believes people need to be on high alert from the start to prevent mosquito breeding. TODAY file photo

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Nicole Ang

I refer to the letter “Workplace safety above all else” (Sept 5, online). 

The majority of the initial Zika cases were contracted by foreign workers at a construction site in Sims Drive, and mosquito breeding is not uncommon at construction sites.

Hence, not only should we prioritise safety at workplaces, we should also look after the health of the staff — in this case, the foreign workers. Some of them work and live in poor conditions. For economic reasons, companies may often choose to not address the bad conditions at construction sites, which not only affects the safety of the workers, but also their health.

But the Zika outbreak shows that such compromising conditions can affect society on the whole.

There have been reports of how employers in this industry are quick to penalise foreign workers for seeing doctors and taking medical leave.

This may have caused workers to put off seeing a doctor out of fear of losing their jobs. Under such circumstances, workers try to hold on for as long as they can and avoid seeing a doctor unless they are very ill.

In the case of Zika, they might have been infected for days by the time they visited the doctor, and they could have spread the virus to others.

People need to be on high alert from the start to take preventive measures earlier to prevent the breeding of mosquitoes, and to control the spread of the disease.

In densely populated Singapore, highly contagious diseases can spread easily within a few days. We should put more emphasis on improving conditions at construction sites and workplaces. The negligence and poor treatment of foreign workers have public-health consequences on our society.

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