In the decade he spent helping migrant workers to access affordable healthcare, Mr Eric Lee was often struck by how they lacked proper rehabilitation for work-related injuries.

Not only were employers unsupportive of physiotherapy and other rehabilitative means, but workers themselves also viewed them as unimportant.

Furthermore, the workers said they could not afford such services even if these could help to prevent future injuries, said Mr Lee, 51.

“We needed to educate them and be with them on the rehabilitation journey, so that they could recover properly and be less prone to accidents,” said Mr Lee, who was head of operations at HealthServe, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) providing subsidised medical services for migrant workers.

With that in mind, the former IT consultant set up his own NGO two years ago to provide free rehabilitative healthcare for migrant workers.

SG Accident Help Centre now has about 20 volunteer physiotherapists and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) physicians, who provide their services at foreign worker dormitories or the NGO’s premises in Flanders Square.

Over three sessions every week, SG Accident Help Centre provides free physiotherapy and TCM therapy such as cupping and acupuncture to around 20 migrant workers.

“Workers hear about us by word of mouth, we don’t need to advertise at all,” said Mr Lee.

PROPER REHABILITATION

We needed to educate them and be with them on the rehabilitation journey, so that they could recover properly and be less prone to accidents.

MR ERIC LEE, who set up SG Accident Help Centre two years ago, on helping migrant workers with work-related injuries understand the importance of proper rehabilitation.

Construction worker Hasan Anamul, 27, said it was a friend who recommended him to the centre.

The Bangladeshi hurt his shoulder and back last December while working at a construction site and could not work while recuperating.

“If the volunteers didn’t take care of me, I would be in a lot of pain,” said Mr Anamul, adding that the volunteers also helped to pay for his meals during therapy and covered his travel costs to and from his dormitory in Sungei Tengah.

Apart from physical rehabilitation, the organisation also collaborates with a private school – Executive Counselling and Training Academy – to offer free counselling sessions for distressed workers.

Mr Lee said: “(The school) helps us engage the workers, so we know from its findings what the workers’ mental health status is like.”

He said the counsellors then help the workers work through their problems.

He hopes to expand the services to more dormitories but said he would need more volunteers.

“They are part of the community, so they must be treated the same as Singaporeans,” said Mr Lee of the workers. “They have been contributing a lot to our nation, and some of them come from the same countries as our great-grandfathers, so we should take care of them.”

• To find out more, go to https://www.sgaccident.org.sg

TOMORROW: POOR/DISADVANTAGED

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