Singapore prepares ‘floating hotels’ for migrant workers as alternative to dormitories

Authorities in Singapore are preparing to house hundreds of foreign workers in accommodation vessels typically used for offshore and marine industry staff. 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.

Some of the healthy residents of those facilities are being moved to other sites including military camps, an exhibition center, vacant public housing blocks and the accommodation vessels, dubbed “floating hotels.”

“Each facility can hold a few hundred occupants and can be suitably organized to achieve safe distancing,” Minister of Transport Khaw Boon Wan said on Sunday, after he visited one of the vessels. They are docked in a restricted area of a port terminal.

Singapore reported 233 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, taking its total to 2,532, eight of whom have died, Reuters reports.