Hard at Work: Life in Singapore
Gerard Sasges and Ng Shi Wen
NUS Press: 2019
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At first, the announcement sounded like music to my ears. After months of consternation over seeing my retired father stepping out of the way of speeding e-scooters and vexation over reading mounting reports of collisions with pedestrians, I was relieved to hear that the government would be banning personal mobility devices (PMDs) from footpaths.

Strangely, though, the ban came into effect overnight on 5 November 2019, despite several prior occasions in which officeholders insisted on the necessity of PMDs as part of ‘active mobility’ plans.

The announcement then provoked another sound: the collective anguish of food delivery drivers working for Deliveroo, GrabFood and Foodpanda, who had come to rely on these devices for their livelihoods and who number around 7,000.

• Tags: Gerard Sasges, Issue 19, Ng Shi Wen, Simon Vincent, Singapore