Genocide in our midst

Some Singapore businessmen, they are a bunch of crooks. You don't really have to look for them in Copenhagen, where an erstwhile gangster lives in comfort and respectability, among crooks, i.e., until he was brought down by one of his collaborators recently. Heaven does not have eyes, they say, for this man is still alive and will probably recover.

In Singapore, crooked businessmen are depriving the foreign workers they bring in to work on their projects their just dues - their salary - and worst, in crunch times, as at present, they abandon them to their own devices. These poor souls cannot find alternative employment, and thus cannot feed themselves. They can't go home either because they don't have the money, and worst, their passports are with the crooked employers. The law should come down hard on these employers, whose only interest is in themselves. It is ok if you bring in trucks and machineries, and once un-needed, you dump them in a yard and let them rust and rot. You cannot treat human beings like that, however. But obviously, many foreign workers among us are being treated exactly like that.

Unless our Manpower Ministry takes a proactive approach, this sorry state of affairs will continue to happen. Bodies representing employers wrote to the press after the press brought the plight of these workers to the public's attention. Otherwise, who knows what the end of these people will be. And when the public does come to know about it, the disgust will be so severe that we cannot but hide in a hole, any hole, and be ashamed to call ourselves Singaporeans because educated, civilised and entrepreneurial Singaporeans that we supposedly are, are practicing human genocide, right in our very own backyard. Is the genocide word too strong? Looking at the situation right now, it just about describes the heinous way in which we treat people who build our houses and our roads.

We should hang our heads in shame.