SINGAPORE: A cross-border worker from Malaysia wrote in a recent social media post that he often thought about quitting his job in Singapore due to the hardships he faced daily for eight years. However, as it turns out, the job quit him first.
Now, having been retrenched, he is facing his biggest fears.
On a Facebook page called 我的cpf够用吗 (Is my CPF sufficient?), which is described as “a gathering place for working people in Singapore and Malaysia,” the man shared on April 7 what his life has been like for the past eight years.
He would wake up at 4 am daily and leave the house before dawn, going quietly so as not to wake his wife and children. Then he would drive his bike to the Causeway, where he would face queues, traffic jams, and seemingly endless waiting.
“The first few years were incredibly tiring, but eventually, I became numb to it. Humans are strange; even this inhuman hardship can slowly become a habit,” he wrote in Chinese.
He added that every day, he thought about the time when he could work in Malaysia again. Each time he was stuck in the traffic on the Causeway, he would ask himself what he was doing all this for. However, at the end of each month, when he exchanged his salary, which was in Singapore dollars, and saw how much he earned, he would simply “swallow” thoughts of giving his job up.
“Reality is cruel. Staying in Singapore, I could comfortably support my family; going back to Malaysia would mean my choices and salary would be halved. So all I could do was complain every day and stubbornly persevere,” he wrote.
All this suddenly came to an end two weeks ago, when he was called in for a meeting with HR. However, he already had an idea that bad news was coming, since the factory he worked for had gotten far fewer orders, and there had already been talk among the workers as to who would be laid off.
Nevertheless, he was still completely unprepared when he was told that the company had decided to move the production line back to Malaysia, but his position would not be retained.
“Hearing this, my mind went completely blank. How ironic! My hometown, which I longed to return to, was finally within my reach, but the company had no intention of taking me with them,” he wrote.
Since then, the post author has been full of sadness and panic, wondering how he’ll be able to keep up with mortgage payments and other household expenses, but his biggest fears are more existential.
“It’s not that I’m afraid of hardship; I’m afraid of being suddenly淘汰 (eliminated/phased out) by the market at this age, of no longer being needed.
“Before, when I was working, my biggest fear was getting stuck in traffic and being late, getting yelled at by my boss. But now, my biggest fear is waking up tomorrow and not even having a place to go to when I’m late,” he wrote. /TISG
This article (M’sian who woke up at 4am daily to work in SG says he suddenly got retrenched after 8 years) first appeared on The Independent Singapore News.
