Each Swab Test in S’pore Allegedly Cost About $200; Gov Will Pay for Construction Workers’ Tests Till August

By
Victor Fong
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While most people in Singapore look at the daily COVID-19 cases and go “phew, still low community cases”, that’s certainly not true for the foreign workers.

Neither is that the case for their employers.

You see, COVID-19 tests ain’t free, and it’s not quite clear how much they would need to be paying since they don’t know how long COVID-19 will last.

And as a TODAYonline article revealed, construction companies say that each swab test costs about S$200.

With about 300,000 construction workers in Singapore, this following image is what foreign worker employers are having in their nightmares:

Image: Giphy

But Goody Feed, the gahmen will do something about it right? Ah Gong is in a money-giving mood, and surely a struggling industry will get help?

Government to Waive Cost of Swab Test Until August 2020

Those that are likely to resume after 1 June 2020 (AKA Phase One) are renovation works in residential units and building works for single dwelling landed properties. Of course, Ah Gong needs to see that the workers went through COVID-19 testing and were tested negative before work can start.

All construction works allowed to resume before August will get the waived cost.

A sigh of relief, right? Not quite.

You see, swab tests are required to be done every two weeks. Which means that the additional cost of construction workers is S$120 million per month for 300,000 workers in the industry.

Image: Giphy

But wait, didn’t you say Ah Gong will pay for it?

Yes. Until August 2020. Which is a problem since construction works don’t just take a few months.

Additional Cost That Nobody Anticipated

At the time when the costs of construction and everything was calculated, understandably nobody came from the future. So, nobody added the cost of COVID-19 testing into the projects. Meaning no budget was set aside for this.

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Since most site work is expected to resume in late July or August, this basically means that if testing is still required, construction companies basically have an additional S$400 per month per worker.

Although to be fair, nobody knows what will happen two months later. It does seem like the government will work out arrangements to split the cost after August, but nobody knows what that looks like until they actually announce it.

And as if worrying about money isn’t enough, there are also other concerns.

Availability of Tests and Cohorting

Without getting tested, construction cannot resume. This means that if there aren’t enough tests, construction may have to be stopped.

And now with COVID-19 measures, work arrangements is now a complete nightmare. Unlike previously where several groups can work on various different projects in a single day, now they would need to separate workers according to their project AND coordinate that with various other sub-contractors.

That is, if those sub-contractors survived and are still operating.

And as if pushing back work a few months isn’t worrying enough, the extra time required to complete projects is yet another thing.

Yep. That’s even more costs in terms of manpower, machinery and equipment rental, preliminaries, overheads.

Of course, that’s all just the construction industry’s side of the story, and if the COVID-19 situation remains the same or gets worse.

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Victor Fong
Email: [email protected]