• About 100 migrant workers got to leave their dormitories to visit Little India for at least five hours
• A pilot programme by MOM allows them to visit designated areas in the community
• One worker met a friend for a much-needed chat
• Two others bought gifts before they leave Singapore in a few days
• Shopkeepers said they do not expect business to pick up much with the small number of workers as customers

SINGAPORE — They offered prayers and thanksgiving at places of worship, shopped for things they could not buy for a while, and caught up with friends for some heart-to-heart talk. Two even managed to get last-minute gifts before leaving Singapore for India this weekend.

These were the migrant workers permitted to leave their dormitories to visit Little India for at least five hours, under a government pilot scheme to gradually ease movement limits on them.

Mr Veerasamy Murugan, for example, quickly called up a friend to make arrangements to meet, the minute he received news on Tuesday (Sept 14) that he would be part of the first controlled group of migrant workers given time out to head out into the wider community.

The 28-year-old had been feeling troubled by family matters recently and was happy for the opportunity to discuss his problems with his friend in person.

Mr Murugan, who works in the construction sector, said: “When you talk to friends directly about your problems, they better understand and can offer advice.”

Having not been out of his dormitory for more than a year except for work, Mr Murugan was also looking forward to resuming his routine of visiting Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple in Little India, remitting money back home to India and buying household products from Mustafa Centre.

He was one of about 40 migrant workers who were part of the first group chosen for the pilot programme under the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) that kicked off on Wednesday morning. 

During the pilot, up to 500 vaccinated migrant workers a week will be allowed to leave their dormitories to visit designated areas for the first time in one-and-a-half years since the coronavirus outbreak here.

There will be two groups daily on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday — one in the morning and another in the afternoon. 

When the outbreak first escalated early last year, workers’ dormitories quickly became hotbeds for the virus due to unsanitary conditions as well as communal and shared facilities that made safe distancing almost impossible. This led to the workers being isolated from the community and confined in the dormitories as infection controls were tightened.

On Wednesday, a group of about 40 Indian and Bangladeshi workers from Westlite Mandai Dormitory and Leo Dormitory in Kaki Bukit were allowed out from 9am to 3pm.

The timing includes the time taken to travel to and from their dormitories.

A second group of about 60 workers from PPT Lodge 1B in Seletar also visited Little India from 3pm to 9pm.

WORKERS VISIT PRE-COVID HAUNTS 

On Wednesday morning, workers were dropped off along Race Course Road and Tekka Lane in buses chartered by MOM and the dormitories.

Mr Murugan and several other workers first stopped by Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple along Serangoon Road.

Entering the temple along with other devotees from the community, the workers participated in prayers specially arranged for them by the temple and received blessed food in conjunction with the pilot.

Mr Murugan said that he was happy to return to the temple, which he used to frequent before the pandemic.

Another migrant worker, Mr Kragori Arockiadass, had been looking forward to visit Church of Our Lady of Lourdes, a Catholic church, on Ophir Road — his usual routine on his days off from work before the pandemic.

However, the 47-year-old and his friends changed their plans to do some shopping at Haniffa store along Dunlop Street instead when they found that the main church building was closed for restoration works.

Entry to Catholic churches here for services also requires online registrations and bookings in advance as part of measures to facilitate contact-tracing and prevent disease spread.

Mr Arockiadass said: “I’ve missed visiting the church in the past one-and-a-half years, but I was able to pray from the outside, so I still feel happy.”

After being stuck in a dormitory for so long, Mr Arockiadass, a site administrator, said that he was happy just to have a taste of freedom.

Two other migrant workers TODAY approached were also delighted with the opportunity to buy items for their families before they return to India on Saturday. 

Both of them were leaving their jobs to spend more time with their families back home, but did not rule out returning to Singapore in future.

One of them, Mr Antonisamy Adaikkalaraj, bought shoes, T-shirts and a belt as gifts for his 25-year-old son.

There was a greater variety of items at Haniffa than at the minimart located within his dormitory grounds, the 52-year-old maintenance worker said.

He added that it was relaxing to visit Little India after more than a year of “boredom” from being cooped up in a dormitory.

His friend, Mr Vairavan Karuppaiah, a 44-year-old maintenance worker, said that before he departs for India this Saturday, he was glad for the chance to see the familiar faces of the shopkeepers at stores he used to frequent in Little India.

A ‘MILESTONE’ REACHED

Calling the pilot a “milestone”, Mr Tung Yui Fai, the chief of MOM’s assurance, care and engagement division, said that the ministry has only been able to go ahead with it because of its strategy to isolate and contain the virus among dormitory workers.

“Because of the good measures put in place in the dormitories, the testing done regularly and the quick action that we take when cases are found, (these have allowed) us to have the confidence (to) now proceed to the next step,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

He believes that the workers will comply with MOM’s instructions to stay within designated sites when they are out.

If any of them “blatantly” violates the rules, the ministry might consider banning the worker from subsequent visits to designated areas for a period of time, he added.

The pilot, announced by MOM last Thursday, is in line with a plan to ease movement restrictions for these workers progressively. It had initially been slated for the first quarter of this year but was put on hold as cases of Covid-19 began rising due to the new Delta strain of the virus.

Earlier this month, Manpower Minister Tan See Leng said that his ministry was waiting for “a safe window” to ease restrictions because it did not want workers to bring back infections from the community into the dormitories.

Other eased restrictions include allowing all migrant workers to have more frequent visits to recreation centres and the resumption of organised excursions to attractions for vaccinated workers. 

To qualify for the pilot, workers must be from dormitories with a vaccination rate of at least 90 per cent and that have had no coronavirus cases in the previous two weeks. Workers must also be vaccinated.

The first place the workers may head to under the pilot is Little India, with more locations to be finalised at a later date.

Mr Tung said that MOM will also look into expanding the number of workers who can take part in the pilot and increase the number of days for the workers to get out and about.

WHAT SHOPKEEPERS SAY

The return of migrant worker groups to Little India brings some business to the shops in the neighbourhood, but shopkeepers interviewed by TODAY said that the small number of workers involved in the pilot would not make much of a difference to their bottom line.

Mr Sureshkumar Appadurai, owner of an eatery and alcohol shop on Chander Road, said that he has been struggling to keep his business afloat and had taken loans that came to “thousands of dollars”.

He reasoned that migrant workers, who are his main customers, have been kept away and that has a direct impact on his earnings.

The 41-year-old said that most of his customers are Tamil-speaking Indian workers and the numbers who do visit Little India under the pilot will be too small to lift his profits.

“The only way to help my business is to allow all the workers out of their dormitories like before.”

Likewise, Mr Natarajan, who goes by a single name, said that 70 per cent of his customers were migrant workers from dormitories before the pandemic.

The 31-year-old is a supervisor of 123 Mobile, a mobile accessories shop along Dunlop Street.

Letting about 100 workers out a day during the pilot “is okay” but it would not bring back business like before, he added.

On the other hand, Mr Anvar Basha, the 65-year-old manager of Rahim Grocery Traders along Upper Dickson Road, was worried that his customers, who are mostly expatriates, could be deterred from visiting his shop if crowds increased in the area.

Mr Basha said that his business had dropped by 75 per cent since the pandemic began and many of his remaining customers had asked for deliveries.

“Yesterday’s cases were already more than 800, so the fear (to return to the shop) is there,” he added.