Newly arrived foreign workers to serve extra 7 days at designated facility after 14-day stay-home notice: MOM

SINGAPORE — From Wednesday (Jan 6), foreign workers who have been approved to enter Singapore and stay in migrant worker dormitories will have to put up at a designated facility and go through an extra seven-day testing regime there.

They will have to do this after completing their mandatory 14-day stay-home notices.

In a press statement on Tuesday, the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) said that these workers will be able to move into their dormitories only after they have completed the added testing regime.

They will still be able to go to work during their stay at the designated facility while they undergo swab tests.

Workers who are going to stay at purpose-built dormitories, factory-converted dormitories, temporary living quarters, temporary occupation licence quarters and construction temporary quarters will have to comply with this new ruling.

MOM stressed that any worker who tests positive for Covid-19 will be “swiftly isolated” and taken to a hospital or a community care facility.

“Their close contacts will also be quarantined and isolated.”

The ministry said that the added safeguards were introduced by the governmental Covid-19 task force to minimise the risk of imported coronavirus cases spreading to the dormitories.

It stressed that the 14-day stay-home notices and polymerase chain reaction test taken before the workers' departure for Singapore have reduced the risk of a missed positive Covid-19 case to “very low levels”.

“Nevertheless, as MOM has started approving the entry of a larger number of foreign workers into Singapore, the multi-ministry task force considers it prudent to further reduce the risk of a missed Covid-19 positive case entering the dormitories and starting a new cluster.”