Why SMRT's discrimination against PRC drivers is wrong

There are so many blog posts about the SMRT PRC drivers' strike at the moment, so I shall concentrate on one aspect of the issue rather than do a long post trying to cover all issues as the strike goes on for another day. Today, I am going to talk about the issue of languages - one that is very close to my heart as a linguist. I have to thank my reader XxToweringxX, allow me to quote from his/her comment on my last post:

"When I replied on Facebook regarding the wage disparity between China and Msia workers, another angrily replied to me that Msia knows Malay, English, Chinese and Hokkien while PRC knows only chinese which is why msia have higher pay." 

I just wanted to point out to you that as someone with a father from Johor and a lot of Malaysian friends & relatives, you cannot assume that *all* Malaysians are able to speak Malay, Mandarin/other dialects & English. Some do of course, but not all. For example, Malay-Malaysians would not speak any Chinese - just doesn't happen. It's often the Malaysian-Chinese who do speak both Malay & Chinese, but those who do speak English well tends to be those who are very well educated.

I remember visiting my relatives in Johor during Chinese New Year when I was a child - my dad is Malaysian-Chinese-Hakka and the language spoken amongst all my Johor-relatives was Hakka. Now I am ashamed to say this, I speak 10 languages competently: English, French, Mandarin, Spanish, Welsh, German, Italian, Hokkien, Malay and Russian - but I can't speak any Hakka. My dad never taught me Hakka - he chose to teach my Mandarin instead so when we go visit those relatives in Malaysia, I have to use either Mandarin, Malay or English to communicate with them and they were like, "oooh you don't speak Hakka? Why don't you ask your father to teach you, it is your language!" 

I have plenty of Malaysian cousins who are around age and it was our family tradition during Chinese new year for the adults to get together and catch up whilst the children (and maids) were left in the courtyard to mingle before the big meal. I used to dread that so much, my dad would bring my sisters and I to the courtyard and after some cursory introductions, like "This is your uncle's daughter, this is your auntie's son, they live in Johor Bahru - now make friends." Duh. My cousins spoke very little English and Mandarin - they spoke Hakka, Malay and Cantonese. I would struggle on in a mish-mash of Malay and Cantonese with them whilst my two sisters would not even try - they would just sit in the corner and speak to each other in English. My dad would get upset when he saw my sisters not even making any effort to get to know the extended family - but it's really hard when you don't have a language in common! 

Now compare that to my mother's extended family in Singapore, I have absolutely no problems when it comes to communicating with them - my mother's family is Hokkien and I would speak Hokkien and/or Mandarin to the older adults and English to anyone around my age or younger. Given that many of my dad's extended family lives in Johor Bahru, the physical distance between Woodlands and Johor Bahru is just 1056 metres - that's the length of the Johor-Singapore causeway. Yet there is such a difference between the languages that we spoke - if not for the fact that I actually do speak some Malay and Cantonese, gosh I would've had to resort to sign language with my relatives in Johor. Did my Malaysian cousins learn English at school? Sure they did - but obviously not to a high enough standard to even have a basic conversation with me in English.

I had a hard time communicating with my Malaysian relatives.

Now I know what you're going to say, "I have loads of Malaysian friends who speak English absolutely fluently!" Yes, that's completely true (read about my Malaysian friend May Ling here) - but there is a sliding scale in Malaysia. Well educated Malaysians tend to speak English flawlessly but let's face it, you're not going to get Malaysian graduates coming to Singapore to drive buses. Those lower down the food chain (like my cousins in Johor) are unlikely to be as competent in English like those high-flying Malaysian graduates and scholars. So if my cousins came to work in Singapore as bus drivers, they could offer Malay (spoken by 17% of Singaporeans), Cantonese (spoken by about 10% of Singaporeans) and Hakka (spoken by less than 5% of Singaporeans). So, I wouldn't assume that all Malaysians were trilingual - you would need to check the language skills of each Malaysian job applicant and treat each person as an individual. By the same token, you can't assume that all Singaporeans speak English. There are plenty of older Singaporeans who do not speak English.

Even amongst the Malaysian-Chinese, there tends to be tendency for them favour Cantonese over Mandarin. Since we don't really speak Cantonese in Singapore (about 10% of Singaporeans have some knowledge of Cantonese), it is hardly a useful language for Singapore. I've got friends from Penang as well and Penang Hokkien is not that easy to understand, like I can struggle on with them with some guess work and figure out what they're saying, but otherwise I'd often resort to Mandarin, Malay or English. Likewise, even if the Malay speaking drivers came from somewhere like Kelantan, they may speak the local Kelantanese dialect Baso-Kelate. It's not just an accent but a dialect of Malay which very hard for Singaporean-Malays to understand. Likewise, Kedahan Malay (from the state of Kedah in the North) is also quite different from standard Malay as well. As for Malaysians from East Malaysia - the linguistic divide is even bigger. Ethnic minorities like the Iban, Kadazan and Bajau have their own languages and the Sabah dialect of Malay (known as 'Baku') is very different from standard Malay spoken in West Malaysia.

So the bottom line is, YES there are Malaysians who are very multi-lingual indeed, but you cannot simply assume that ALL Malaysians are multi-lingual. I am all for rewarding drivers who can speak 3 or 4 languages with a bonus, but each driver should be tested for their linguistic skills individually, rather than for SMRT to make any assumptions like that on the basis of their nationality. Besides, some PRCs in Singapore have made some effort to learn some English. Indeed, if there is a system that will reward them for learning English, then yes they will make an effort, isn't that what we all want? Right now, the system is like, "oh you're PRC you won't speak English, you never will and we will assume that" rather than, "come on, if you learn English, we will reward you for it! 加油!"

I would also like to raise another point in defence of the PRC bus drivers who don't speak English - not all Singaporean bus drivers speak English either. I was born in 1976 in Singapore and grew up in Singapore - from a young age, I had to get the bus to school and often the bus drivers did not speak English. We're talking about older Chinese Singaporean 'uncle' type bus drivers who spoke Mandarin, Hokkien and maybe a smattering of Malay. I remember how I had to translate for an Indian friend of mine when he was challenged by a bus driver in a mish-mash of Mandarin and Malay that his bus concession pass was no longer valid. Oh yes, those were the days before we had EZ Link cards... My dear Indian friend was saying, "Look, uncle, can you not see that I am Indian? Speak English or Tamil! I don't speak Malay, I don't speak Chinese!" And just to make his point, he repeated himself in Tamil.

"Uncle, can you not see that I am Indian?"

Okay, that incident was in 1991 but you get the idea - older Chinese Singaporeans have never been universally fluent in English. Rather, you have a sliding scale from "first language native standard fluent" to "no English at all" and there's everything in between. Those who were fluent in English tended to be highly educated professionals whilst those who spoke little or no English tended to work in professions lower down the food chain... like bus drivers.

Unlike taxi drivers, bus drivers don't even need to engage in any kind of conversation with the passengers. I get on the bus, I swipe my EZ Link card, I sit down. When I get to my destination, I swipe my EZ Link card as I get off the bus and at no point do I need to speak to the bus driver. It is not a profession where it is critical for the employee to speak English - heck, I'm not even that fussed whether I can indulge in small talk with taxi drivers as long as they take the most direct route. They just need to understand where I want to go and that's more than enough really. This is why there are older Singaporean-Chinese bus and taxi drivers who barely know any English - and guess what? That's perfectly fine. And as for the bodoh goondu who insists on asking the old bus driver for directions, tolong lah, what the hell are you thinking? You're holding up the entire bus - all the passengers are waiting whilst you're trying to get directions to Orchard Point from the bus driver? Go ask someone else and stop disturbing the bus driver you idiot, the bus driver has a bus to drive!

So if we leave the issue of languages aside, the bus drivers are all doing the same job, putting in the same hours ... can the wage differential (as seen in the chart above) be justified? Yes the PRCs receive a subsidy for lodging and utilities but their hostel at the bus depot is so basic. In an interview, a PRC driver told Yahoo News, "They may say that we are given accommodation, but have you seen the accommodation they give us? It isn't fit for humans. Eight of us share a room, and there isn't any walking space between our beds. I've also been bitten by rats and insects on multiple occasions before. This really is unfair to us. We do the exact same work, work for the same number of hours and yet we don't receive the same compensation. Our living conditions back home are far, far better than they are here." Can you imagine living like these PRC drivers? Is SMRT being fair to them? Where do your sympathies lie?

So my readers, what do you think about the whole situation? You know the drill, don't be shy now - leave a comment below, let me know how you feel. Thank you!