- MPA Singapore and partners launch floating accommodations to tackle COVID-19. Specifically, the joint initiative will be used to house healthy foreign workers.
- The statement highlighted that all foreign workers will be firstly examined, going through the necessary health checks before boarding the floating accommodations.
- The two floating accommodations will include isolation rooms and the essential needs include the delivery of catered meals.
The Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) has partnered with port operator PSA Singapore, Keppel Offshore & Marine, UK-based Bibby Maritime, and The Ascott Limited to bring in and manage two floating accommodations to temporarily house foreign workers, reads a press release by MPA.
Floating hotels
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, which they have called “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 after he visited one of the vessels.
They are docked in a restricted area in a port terminal, Khaw said.
Provisions on deck
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.
Khaw released photographs of a basic, clean cabin with three beds covered in blue linen, and said the residents would be able to use a deck for an hour of exercise every day.
Meals will be prepared off-site and delivered to the cabins to minimize intermingling. A medical facility is also being set up nearby on land.
Singapore reported 233 new coronavirus cases on Sunday taking its total to 2,532, eight of whom have died.
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Source: Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore
