Grounded at home, NTU’s journalism students look within S’pore to uncover stories of migrant workers amid pandemic

After circling the Tuas area for an hour looking for migrant workers to speak to, undergraduate Yong Jun Yuan finally found a factory converted dormitory, where he came across migrant worker Anisur Rahman, who had just recovered from Covid-19. The Bangladeshi told Mr Yong the story of how he had volunteered to cut the hair of the 240 workers who had been quarantined alongside him at the Singapore Expo isolation facility. Mr Yong is one of the 14 undergraduates from NTU who uncovered stories of migrant workers in Singapore as part of the Go-Far programme. Traditionally, this annual programme by NTU’s Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information sends students to different parts of the world to get a taste of overseas reporting. But with travel restrictions firmly in place amid the pandemic this year, Mr Yong’s cohort of journalism students was forced to stay in Singapore. Nonetheless, their journalism lecturer Hedwig Alfred noted that they now had an opportunity to report on the biggest story at the time: the plight of migrant workers in quarantine.