Analytical_Factsheet_on_Prejudice_&_Discrimination_on_Foreigners

WISP Prejudice & Discrimination ASSIGNMENT 1B ANALYTICAL FACTSHEET ON PREJUDICE & DISCRIMINATION ON FOREIGNERS SECTION I - EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The word ‘prejudice’ can be described as a feeling or attitude concerning with the way how people think about the others. According to Wikipedia, “a prejudice is a prejudgment which means a preconceived belief, opinion or judgment.” In the other words, it is a personal opinion towards someone without having any evidences to prove it. This can be due to an experiences or traditions within the certain community. Moreover, it can be said that discrimination is an outcome or product of prejudice, which means, it can lead to create unbalances and inequality in society against minority group of people causing discriminations. SECTION II - THE ISSUES AND WHO ARE INVOLVED In every society, there have been issues about prejudice and discrimination from times to times. In ancient times, there is more serious cases concerning discrimination against certain type of people due to the lack of development and educational knowledge. In our past, most of the countries have two different type of class of people, the riches and the slaves. The poor people or the low class people were denied to access to most of the chances and rights that the high class persons have. In different places, we can find different forms of discrimination. A person can be prejudice and discriminated due to his gender or class or age or race or nationality or, even due to one’s skin colour. Singapore is known as a developed county for long time. Although it is a small island state, it became one of the top metropolitan city from the normal fishing village within nearly two centuries period. In fact, a developed country is the one which is not only advanced in economic but also can provide protection for its citizens from any kind of danger or discrimination to ensure their rights and opportunities. Indeed, Singapore is composed of multi nationalities, that means, the number of foreigners in Singapore is relatively high and most of them are workers contributing in various forms of industries. Actually, Singapore welcomes a lot of foreign talents and workers by providing effective protection and privileges for them. However, we still can find some instances of discrimination against foreigners in Singapore and most of them are discrimination against domestic workers and skilled workers working in low end industries and constructions. Although it is unlikely to wipe out the discrimination entirely, it is still possible to take several action to minimise it. SECTION III - WHY IS IT IMPORTANT FOR US TO TALK ABOUT IT' Firstly, one of the instances that I found is domestic worker abuse. The foreign domestic worker employment in Singapore is relatively high and it is the biggest category among the foreign employment. However, those workers are not protected by Singapore’s Employment Act. This result 1 WISP Prejudice & Discrimination ASSIGNMENT 1B that employer and agencies are only party who can decide the key labour condition such as, wages, the working hours and salary detections. The workers only have little or no power against them. The workers are forced to work all day long without a single holiday throughout a year. They also get very little paid while the agency still detected large amount from their salaries. Such cases should be protected because foreign workers will not refuse to work in Singapore even for very low wages since they don’t want to go back to their own countries where they only can get even much lower. Actually, such things are not only happening to domestic workers but also the skilled workers from foreign countries face the same problem. In second case, the most common problem occurring among them is being treated differently from what they stated in the employment contract. For example, an unskilled foreign worker is actually being paid about $S1000 per month despite he had been told that he would get at least S$1200 at the beginning. There are many other similar cases concerning with the foreigners. In my opinion, such cases can be regarded as discrimination against foreign workers. We also found instance of discrimination against minority nationalities or races in Singapore. According to ethnic residential quotas introduced in 1989, every area in Singapore must comply with it in tem of residential ratio. Although the purpose of this is to prevent ethnic enclaves from emerging and harming racial harmony in the area, it also can cause the negative effect on minority group of people in Singapore. Recently I have heard the story from one of my friends that his parents, who are Myanmar PR in Singapore, had been denied to buy an HDB flat that they like and they can effort due to this quota system. This, though not major, is a kind of foreigner discrimination in Singapore. SECTION IV - WHERE CAN WE START TO FIX THE PROBLEM' We all need to think about these issues seriously as they can lead to imbalances in society. We can take several actions in order curb such cases to minimise the discriminations. We can start by organising effective education campaigns and school programmes in order to provide the better understanding over the foreign workers. We also need to get attention from the employers so that they are able to change their attitude towards the workers and more likely to treat their employees as a proper employer. We also try to change to this mindset to permeate throughout all Singaporeans. This is one of the best ways we should act to minimise the discriminations on foreigners. Another solution is to create more openness and increased willingness to discuss about solving this issue. In conclusion, there are indeed examples of foreigner discriminations in Singapore, though some are not major, and the discriminations against domestic workers and skilled workers would be the most common problem. But we can take several actions to minimise them and, eventually, swipe them out entirely from this society to build a brighter future for Singapore which would be proud of its developed economics as well as its high-class community, that free from abuses in human’s rights and opportunities. 2