Sales at Liang Food Caterer have plunged by around 80% in recent weeks but general manager Foo Zhi Yang is still dishing up meals for migrant workers.
The firm prepares lunch and dinner – rice with vegetables and other ingredients – and delivers them to workers every day.
He is doing this under the umbrella of Project Belanja, an initiative run by the Blossom World Society charity and the Restaurant Association of Singapore. The project provides meals for foreign workers, who make up the vast majority of new cases of COVID-19 here.
Workers can get in touch with social enterprise ItsRainingRaincoats, which collates and sends requests to the association, which then approaches its members, who cook, pack and deliver the food. Project Belanja has raised more than $597,600 from private donors and the public on Giving.sg.
Another initiative, MaskForce, aims to provide 870,000 migrant workers and domestic helpers with a surgical mask and two reusable fabric masks each.
The initiative is led by Ms Sim Ann, Senior Minister of State for Culture, Community and Youth, and supported by charities, private donors and firms. The public can also contribute at Giving.sg. Beauty company Jean Yip Group, which closed all of its 70 outlets islandwide when tighter social distancing measures came into force, has donated money to the cause.
The donors hope the living conditions of migrant workers in dormitories will improve.
In another initiative, The Projector cinema is making Lei Yuan Bin’s documentary, I Dream Of Singapore, available online until today (26 April), with 60% of rental proceeds going to Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2).
The rest will help support the cinema, which has been closed.
Multinational companies are also chipping in. Consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble is donating 300,000 care packs worth around $5 million to workers in dormitories.
Read more here.
Source: The Straits Times, 26 April 2020