By Beh Lih Yi
SINGAPORE, March 18 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – In dorms on Singapore’s fringes or employers’ backrooms, a growing number of migrant workers are using poetry to shed light on their hidden struggles and reconnect with their roots.
The tiny Southeast Asian nation of 5.6 million counts on a about 1 million migrant workers from countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia, China and Myanmar to fuel its powerhouse economy, working in sectors from construction to services and home help.
Although horrific labour abuse cases are rare in the rich city-state, campaigners say migrants grapple with unpaid salaries, having their travel documents withheld and massive debts racked up in fees they pay agents to get work.
Often tucked away in dormitories for foreign workers and only seen in public on Sundays, their day off, scores of migrants are writing poetry and short stories offering a rare insight into their little known worlds.
“When I write, I am happy. When people read our work and accept us as human beings, we are happy,” Indonesian domestic worker Deni Apriyani told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Hailing from a sleepy village in Indonesia, 29-year-old Apriyani moved to Singapore in 2013 to become a domestic worker as she wanted to buy land for her father, a farmer, back home.
Working from dawn to dusk looking after an expatriate family, she started writing poetry on her mobile phone at the end of her 14-hour work day as an outlet for her frustration as she struggled to adjust to life in the new city.
Softly-spoken Apriyani won a poetry writing competition for migrants in 2017 and one of her poems was published in a book last year that brought together more than 60 works by Singaporean writers and migrant workers.
“You call them sluts, you call them useless, you call them shameful, but did you know the stories behind them?” she asked in the poem “Murderers”, which highlighted the stigma facing migrant workers who try to find love in the city.
