Singapore is preparing to house hundreds of foreign workers in accommodation vessels typically used for offshore and marine industry staff as it races to find alternatives to dormitories where the novel coronavirus has been spreading rapidly. Tens of thousands of migrant workers, many from South Asia, live in cramped dormitories across Singapore, which have become the biggest source of coronavirus infections in recent days.
Authorities are moving some of the healthy residents of those facilities to other sites including military camps, an exhibition centre, vacant public housing blocks and the accommodation vessels of which they are called as floating hotels. “Each facility can hold a few hundred occupants and can be suitably organised to achieve safe distancing,” Minister of Transport Khaw Boon Wan said in a Facebook post on Sunday 12th April, 2020 after he visited one of the vessels and are docked in a restricted area in a port terminal.
The Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore said it was working with terminal operator PSA Singapore, Keppel Corp’s rig-building unit, floating accommodation barge provider Bibby Maritime Ltd and serviced apartment operator The Ascott Ltd to bring in and manage two floating accommodations.
Images of Accomodation Unit BIBBY PROGRESS at Malta back to September 2003.
Photos by Capt. Lawrence Dalli. Do not use these images without my permission. © All rights reserved. Malta Ship Photos & Action Photos – www.maltashipphotos.com
Published – Friday 17th April, 2020