Help The Workers Who Help Build Our Country

It is a tragic day today with two work­ers dead and sev­eral oth­ers injured in a scaf­fold­ing col­lapse at an MRT sta­tion con­struc­tion site. It is also a time to spare a thought for the thou­sands of migrant work­ers who do these tough, low-paying and some­times dan­ger­ous jobs build­ing our country’s infrastructure.

For as long as Sin­ga­pore has been around, we’ve been depen­dent on migrant work­ers — We founded this coun­try on Indian coolies work­ing on the docks and the Sam­sui women on our roads and build­ings in the 19th to 20th Centuries.

And before K-Pop and Korean movie stars, we imported Korean con­struc­tion work­ers, who together with their Thai coun­ter­parts, built Raf­fles City, Marina Square and every other major con­struc­tion project in the 1980s.

We owe a debt to them because they are doing our national service.

This after­noon some of my friends and I scram­bled to arrange for a dona­tion chan­nel for the fam­i­lies of this morning’s acci­dent vic­tims. We spoke to MCYS, MOM and the LTA to see how we could coor­di­nate it so that the pub­lic who wish to help out can do so. Then we found that the peo­ple already help­ing migrant/transient work­ers were most ready, will­ing and able to help.

The orga­ni­za­tion is called “Tran­sient Work­ers Count Too”, and they have offered to take in dona­tions for the vic­tims. The money you donate will go towards the fam­i­lies of the two dead work­ers, and towards the injured work­ers while they are unable to work as they recover.

This is how you can donate:

BY CHEQUE:

Make a crossed cheque payable to: ‘Tran­sient Work­ers Count Too’, write your name and “Bugis MRT Acci­dent” at the back of the cheque and mail it to: 5001 Beach Road, #06–27 Golden Mile Com­plex, Sin­ga­pore 199588.
Send an email to info@twc2.org.sg with your name, cheque no., amount and “Bugis MRT Acci­dent”, so that the dona­tion can be prop­erly recorded and a receipt sent to you.

BY SGGIVES (ONLINE)

You can donate using your credit card here. A small com­mis­sion is charged by this dona­tion col­lec­tion agency. Under the “Spe­cial Occa­sion / Per­son” field, type “Bugis MRT Accident”.

BY PAYPAL (ONLINE)

You can use your pay­pal account or credit card to donate here. How­ever, a com­mis­sion of 4% or so is charged on every dona­tion. There is no field for you to input the pur­pose of dona­tion, so it is advis­able to drop twc2 an email after you’ve donated by this method.