The following article was published by Channelnewsasia on 18 November 2003.
Foreign workers can call home from telephone lounges in their dormitory
Channelnewsasia, 18 November 2003
SINGAPORE: Calling home has just become a lot easier for hundreds of foreign workers living at a Jurong domitory. A telephone lounge has been set up in their living quarters - a first in Singapore.
Sundays for Prakash used to be spent jostling with the crowds and standing in long queues waiting for a public telephone at Serangoon Road.
But not anymore.
Now, he can call his wife in South India from the air-conditioned comfort of his own domitory.
"Now better than Serangoon Road, easier to call India and we can speak, very happy also, i feel very happy," he said.
This is the first telephone lounge set up in a foreign workers' dormitory.
And the Singapore Contractors Association hopes the idea will catch on in other dormitories across the island.
Over the next one year, the telephone service provider intends to set up as many lounges in all the foreign worker dormitories in Singapore and one of the immediate benefits that foreign workers will derive from this lounge is that they don't have to go to public places to make that all important phone call to their loved ones over the weekend.
For those workers, with friends or relatives in Singapore, it gets even better.
Local calls from these lounges will be free. - CNA.
