One man organises open-air film on dangers of unprotected sex.
The Straits Times Serene Goh reports…
About 200 Indian foreign workers yesterday gathered at Sim Lim Tower, their usual haunt on Sundays, to watch a film about sex. The man responsible for the gathering was civil engineer Ravi Rai, who arranged the screening to warn the workers that they could get Aids (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) if they had unprotected sex.
“These workers come from rural villages, where there is no awareness at all”, said the 39 year-old Singaporean, who has been dealing with Indian construction workers for eight years. “They come from a poor country, where people are very conservative and don’t want to talk about sex” he said. “I just want to give them information, so they don’t practice unsafe sex”.
When asked by The Straits Times, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said Aids education was ongoing at work places in Singapore. Foreign workers have access to information about the disease and how they can avoid contracting it, MOH said in a statement. The Health Promotion Board told The Straits Times that it also supplied pamphlets and posters on Aids in Tamil and Bengali – the two most commonly spoken languages among Indian foreign workers here.
But Mr Rai, who is also president of India-based social-work organisation Children of Mother Earth (Come), pointed out that printed information on the disease was lost on those who were illiterate. So, he borrowed the board’s Tamil films on aids and screened it on the police’s audio-visual system at Sim Lim Tower.
Mr Benedict Jacob-Thambiah, 32 of aids awareness group Action For Aids, said Mr Rai’s efforts should help drive home the message, being delivered by one Indian to others. “What he is doing is using a culturally sensitive approach, which is the best approach to educating people”, he said.
All foreign workers who seek employment here must undergo a medical examination, including a test for the human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV), which causes Aids. After that, they are tested periodically for the disease. Those who test positive are deemed unfit for employment.
Mr Rai is not stopping with his Sim Lim screening. He has also asked the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) if it can include a safe-sex segment in its orientation course for foreign workers. He is waiting for MOM to get back to him on this.
Construction worker K.Rajamanickam, who is 29 and single and who was at the show, said “The film tells me what Aids is and how it can be transmitted. It confirms my belief that I should get married and stay faithful to one partner”.
Another construction worker at the screening, Mr Jeya Segaran, 32, who is married, said “The film warns me about going to red-light areas here. I don’t go there because I earn only $15 a day and I can’t afford it”.
The MOH said that between May 1985, when the first HIV-infected Singaporean was detected, and the end of last year, more than 3,500 foreigners here have been found to have HIV. In the same period, 1,362 Singaporeans have been diagnosed as HIV positive.
It’s not really the death sentence that it used to be. Infact, there have been cases of people getting cured from hiv. Remember that boy about 4 years ago? It wasn’t covered too much on the news because he was having alternative therapies and vitamin therapy (which of course the media don’t want to promote ) and after years of testing positive for hiv, his tests became negative.