Over 44,000 foreign workers receive free $10 top-ups to their prepaid cards to call home for Hari Raya

SINGAPORE - More than 44,000 foreign workers have received a free $10 top-up each to their prepaid SIM cards so they could 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 would get the top-up automatically from last Friday to Monday. Hari Raya Aidilfitri was on Sunday.

The initiative was largely funded by social media company Facebook and non-profit organisation Community Foundation of Singapore, said TWC2 on Wednesday (May 27).

In addition, 10,000 physical top-up cards will be distributed to workers living in factory converted dormitories.

These moves are part of TWC2's campaign to help migrant workers top up their prepaid phones, with close to $1 million spent since April 5. The campaign has helped more than 90,000 foreign workers so far, said TWC2, or about a third of the work permit holders in the construction sector here.

The phone top-up campaign also benefited newly warded foreign workers diagnosed with Covid-19. This was to allow Ministry of Health staff to call the workers for contact tracing purposes.

New phone chargers were also bought for hospitals to give out to the warded workers as many of them did not have access to their belongings after being hospitalised to avoid bringing in contaminated items.

Ez-link cards were also given out to workers who did not have arranged transport after they were discharged from hospital.

TWC2 explained that while workers using free data cards or Wi-Fi in their dorms could call home, this was dependent on their family members having smartphones or being able to overcome poor mobile Internet connectivity in some remote areas overseas.

So the group's phone top-up efforts can help overcome these issues by allowing workers to make regular phone calls that do not rely on the Internet.

President of TWC2 Debbie Fordyce said that when Singapore's 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.