You Don't Want Foreign Workers In Your Backyard?

On the 3rd of September of this year, there was an article in the Straits Times about how residents in Serangoon Gardens were petitioning against the housing of 1000 foreign workers in an unused school building near their area. I for one, don't think that it really is that much of a problem, and don't see why the residents are making such a fuss about it. The residents said that the move would create "security and social problems and it would spoil the ambience of the estate"

One of the residents talked about how her sister had forgotten to lock her car, and caught a foreign worker trying to steal her cashcard and "other items" for her car. If you forget to lock your car, I think many people, not only foreign workers would try to steal your items. I don't think all Singaporeans are so morally upright that they would simply pass by an unlocked car. I think she was lucky that someone hadn't tried to hotwire her car and driven off in it. An increase in any large number of people living in an area would result in a proportional increase in crime, something that would be expected. One should not make the assumption that foreign residents are more likely to be involved in crime, when in fact, many of them just want to earn enough money to remit back home and arent inclined to create trouble.

Residents also talked about the problems of loitering and alcoholism. I think that this may be a likely problem that may arise with the use of the vacant school building as a dormitory. However, I think that if the dormitory has places for the foreign workers to sit down and relax, that won't be a problem. Also the police could step up patrols in the area in the first few weeks of the dormitory's use, to make it clear that loitering was not encouraged, it would certainly help assuage the resident's feelings and keep the foreign workers from 'sitting around and making noise'.

The residents also complained about congestion already present in the area, and how the use of the school building as a dormitory would only make the problem worse. However, several new roads are currently being built to ease congestion in that area, and that should ease congestion somewhat, and thus, the presence of the lorries and the buses picking the workers up and sending them back wouldn't be much of a problem.

One of the main reason the residents believe that the school building shouldn't be used as a dormitory, that it would spoil the ambience, is a point that I don't think has any practical problems caused by it. What it means is that they do not want the school building to be used as a dorm as it would spoil the image they have as a idyllic private estate. The worst that could happen would be that property prices for that area go down. And even that would simply be temporary as the building is only to be used for as a temporary dormitory space, not a permanent one.

I don't think that there is much of a problem with the school building being used as a temporary dorm space, as it wouldn't negatively affect the lives of the residents there to such a large extent.