I Help Build Homes I Will Never Live In
My name is Rahim. I am 29, from Bangladesh. Every morning, I wake up at 6. The room is already warm. Eight of us sleep inside, on double-decker beds, with just enough space to walk between them. We take turns to wash, to cook, to call home.
By 7:30, I am at the construction site.
My basic salary is about $500 a month. But that number does not mean much. What I actually bring home depends on how many days I work and how much overtime I get. If it rains, sometimes work stops. If there is overtime, I stay. Most days, I do not say no.
Before I came here, I paid around 5 lakh taka, about SGD $6,000, to an agent in Dhaka. Not to a Singapore company. To middlemen who arranged everything. My family sold land. I borrowed from relatives. When I arrived, I was already in debt.
The first year, almost everything I earned went back home to repay that money.
People think I can just go home for a visit.
It is not so simple.
My work permit is tied to one employer. If I go back, I need approval. If the company no longer needs me, I lose my job. Then I must leave Singapore. To come back again, I may have to pay another agent fee. I cannot take that risk.
So I stay.
Three years now, I have not seen my parents in person. My mother sends me photos. Each time, she looks older. I look at the screen and try to remember her voice in real life.
Sometimes, when I stand on a high floor and look at the buildings we are finishing, I wonder who will live there. Families, maybe. People who go home every night, who eat dinner together, who sleep in quiet rooms.
I am tired most days. My body hurts. But I still smile when I call home.
Because this life, hard as it is, is still a chance.
A chance to clear my debt. A chance to send money back. A chance to give my family something I never had.
So when you walk past a construction site and see us working under the sun,
just remember,
the comfort you live in every day
is something someone else paid a very high price just to be part of building.
