Foreign workers are sex fiend

...or at least that's the impression many locals seem to have.

One rainy evening some two weeks ago, I was at Serangoon Gardens to cover a meet-the-people session attended by Minister George Yeo and Mrs Lim Hwee Hua. Coincidentally, that was just a day after word got out that the Ministry of National Development was studying plans to convert an old school in the vicinity of the housing estate into a dormitory for some 1000 foreign workers.

Expectedly thus, the issue dominated the discussion and the residents were all "true to form" in voicing out their disapproval.

A lot of grievances were uttered, but from what I hear, I get the idea that there was pretty much one common concern on everyone's mind. And though it was never said outright, it was implied again and again, what with pregnant comments like "As it is, workers from construction sites nearby stare at my maid, even when she is with us in the car", "There will be a lot of half-naked men sitting by the roadside" and "They have needs too".

But from a brief conversation with another photographer while waiting, I realised I was too quick to assume that this line of protest sits squarely only with those who do not want anything they regard as remotely unpleasant in their own backyard. And that the rest of us can tell that it's Prejudice rearing it's ugly head.

When I mockingly suggest that they mind as well consider shipping these foreign workers away to some offshore island to stay, she dryly let on that their worries were valid and if she had a daughter (which again re-enforces my earlier point), she too would be troubled by this new presence in the neighborhood.

And so it was with a bit of an eyebrow raised when I studied the table accompanying Zul's exclusive article in yesterday's Today, detailing the breakdown of arrests in 2007 by population type.



For the numerically-challenged, what the figures above are telling you is simply this: statistics have shown that for every 100,000 Singapore residents, there were 435 cases of arrest made. Yet in contrast, for every 100,000 work permit holders aka foreign workers, the arrest rate came out to be only a relatively low 227 cases.

Suffice to say, foreign workers commit fewer crimes than the locals themselves. That is, if these numbers were anything to go by. Unfortunately, there was no further disclosure into the breakdown of sex crimes within each category.

Said a flight attendant interviewed in the piece, who routinely sees many Indian workers sitting under his block, chatting with friends over bottles of beer, "This whole discussion about foreign workers just highlights the different treatment we accord 'foreign talents' and low-skilled workers."