$10 top-up of 44k foreign workers' prepaid phone cards for Aidilfitri
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
A man using his phone on a balcony in a block of flats in Redhill Close that is temporarily being used to house foreign workers. An initiative by Transient Workers Count Too, to help migrant workers top up their prepaid cards, has enabled workers to maintain communication with their families.
ST PHOTO: CHONG JUN LIANG
More than 44,000 foreign workers here have each received a free $10 top-up of their prepaid SIM cards so they can call their families during the Hari Raya Aidilfitri period.
Under an initiative by migrant workers group Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2), workers who had no money left in their prepaid M1, Singtel and StarHub accounts as of May 1 automatically received the top-up from last Friday to Monday.
The initiative was largely funded by social media company Facebook and non-profit organisation Community Foundation of Singapore, said TWC2 yesterday. In addition, 10,000 physical top-up cards will be distributed to workers in factory-converted dormitories.
These moves are part of TWC2's campaign to help migrant workers top up their prepaid cards, with close to $1 million spent since April 5. Over 90,000 workers have been helped so far, or about a third of the work permit holders in the construction sector here, said TWC2.
It also benefited newly warded workers who had Covid-19, and allowed Ministry of Health staff to call them for contact tracing purposes.
New phone chargers were also bought for hospitals to give out to the warded workers as many did not have access to their belongings after being hospitalised, to avoid bringing in contaminated items.
Ez-link cards were also given to workers who did not have transport arranged after they were discharged from hospital.
TWC2 explained that while workers could call home using free data cards or Wi-Fi in dorms, this was dependent on their family members having smartphones and overcoming poor mobile Internet connectivity in some remote areas overseas.
So the group's phone top-up efforts help by allowing workers to make regular phone calls that do not rely on the Internet.
President of TWC2 Debbie Fordyce said that when the circuit breaker was first announced, "we knew immediately that it was critical to help workers maintain a line of communication with the outside world and their families back home".
"To have achieved this was no small feat for a small non-governmental organisation like ours. But we could not have done it without the support of many," she added.
