Smog conditions in Singapore have worsened to unprecedented levels, but a legion of workers in the island state have visibly kept plugging away outdoors, prompting public concern for their health and well-being.
On Friday, as smog conditions intensified to a new record, some citizens took to the Internet to criticize their leaders for perceived inaction. Many posted photographs of construction sites across the island nation that purportedly show many laborers still working outdoors—some without masks—despite the hazardous air quality.
“Why are construction workers still on site? This is ridiculous,” Choo Zheng Xi, a lawyer and social activist, wrote on his Facebook. “I’m working from home in air-conditioning, and I have ash in my nostrils … can we please stop putting profits before people for once.”
Others noted that Singapore’s military has already reduced, and in some cases halted, outdoor training and questioned why the Ministry of Manpower, or MOM, wasn’t doing the same for the city’s hundreds of thousands of manual laborers, many of whom are foreigners who work in jobs such as construction. Full story
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