Yesterday, Manpower Minister Josephine Teo thanked all dormitory operators for cooperating as the authorities stepped in to handle the dormitory infection crisis.
Bet she wasn’t thanking this dormitory director, who didn’t just refuse to cooperate, but allegedly got aggressive and eventually got arrested instead.
Dormitory Director Allegedly Got Aggressive at MOM & Police Officers When They Did an Inspection
Yesterday, the police revealed details of a series of people who had been charged for “abusive and irresponsible behaviour” during the Circuit Breaker period.
The usual suspects were listed: people not wearing masks lah, people being abusive towards enforcement officers lah, and more.
But one stood out, because everyone’s eyes are on the place he’s working in now: dormitory director Tan Han Yong.
The 76-year-old, who’s an Indonesian national, appears to be the owner of a dormitory as he said in court that he’s a “businessman”.
Lest you didn’t know, a businessman can engage a director to run a business.
So what did this elderly do?
On 17 April 2020, a day after Ms Teo announced the “three-pronged strategy” for foreign worker dormitories to contain the spread, impose lockdowns and separate workers in essential services, some Ministry of Manpower (MOM) officers went to inspect Tan’s dormitory that was along Kampong Ampat.
Nothing’s wrong with that, except that for some reason, Tan decided to behave aggressively towards the officers.
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The officers then called the police who tried to defuse the situation. That didn’t help: he allegedly also cursed at the police officers, and eventually got arrested.
The weirdest part of this incident?
At court, Tan said, “I’m a businessman. I’ve never used such language.” He then added that this was the first time in court.
He was therefore charged for cursing at police officers, and for that offence, he could be jailed for up to a year, fined up to S$5,000, or both.
The businessman did not want to plead guilty and would be hiring a lawyer to defend himself on 22 May 2020.
According to the prosecutor, he could also be charged under the Infectious Diseases Act for hindering the work of an MOM officer.
The man was charged yesterday, and if he had been watching how Ms Teo thanked the dormitory operators last night as well, he might also be frowning after a long day in court.
Construction Workers in a Project to be Housed Together
Yesterday, during a virtual media briefing, National Development Minister Lawrence Wong provided more details on how construction workers can resume work with new measures.
One of which involves accommodation; all workers in a project would have to be housed together even if they have different employers or have always lived in different dormitories.
This will prevent them from inter-mixing which could contribute to a mass cluster like what we have now.
So this means dormitories all over Singapore would be at war soon: some would be losing many customers while some would be gaining many more.
So would our dear Mr Tan be a winner or a loser?
Or would he curse at other dormitory owners as well?
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