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Political Agenda: Singapore’s Invisible Population

There are almost a million low-wage migrant workers in Singapore, but they often face physical and social segregation, and are excluded from data on Singapore’s resident population. We talk to Dr Stephanie Chok of the Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (HOME) and Debbie Fordyce of Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2) about the issues this invisible population face.

In Conversation with Tan Wah Piow

Thum Ping Tjin talks to Tan Wah Piow about childhood, his time in the University of Singapore, his activism, his fraudulent conviction and the PAP government’s attempted abuse of the National Service Act, his subsequent flight and exile from Singapore, all the people who helped him along the way, and his reflections on Singapore’s politics and political activism today.

Political Agenda—Are Singapore’s Hawker Centres Dying Out?

Singapore’s hawker centres have been described as a “cultural institution”, a source of pride as much as a source of good eats. Yet the hawker industry is in crisis today, with rents and overhead costs rising even as hawkers are pressured to keep their prices down. In this episode, PJ Thum heads to Chinatown Food Complex to speak to three hawkers about the difficulty of surviving, not as cultural symbols, but viable businesses.

Notes From a Changi Jail

Jolovan Wham, the well known Singaporean human rights defender and activist, talks to PJ Thum about his most recent stint in jail for civil disobedience. They discuss Singapore’s arbitrary laws, his experience with jail, issues with the criminal justice system, and why he is advocating for prison reform.