(Bloomberg) -- Pope Francis addressed wealth inequality during a visit to Singapore on Thursday, urging the financial hub’s government to do more to protect the poor and migrant workers, including ensuring a fair wage.
Seated next to President Tharman Shanmugaratnam in a state address, the Holy See said he hoped special attention would be paid to the poor and elderly who helped lay the foundations for today’s Singapore and to protect the dignity of migrant workers.
“These workers contribute a great deal to society and should be guaranteed a fair wage,” Francis said. “I would like to highlight the risk entailed in focusing solely on pragmatism or placing merit above all things, namely the unintended consequence of justifying the exclusion of those on the margins from benefiting from progress.”
Wealth inequality has turned into a hot-button issue in Singapore, one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in. Prime Minister Lawrence Wong has, in response, moved to introduce unemployment benefits for Singaporeans as part of a slate of first-time or expanded welfare programs as he seeks to bolster the ruling party ahead of elections that must be held by November 2025.
Singapore doesn’t have an official minimum or living wage for workers. The island nation is the final stop in Francis’ 11-day tour that took him to East Timor, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.
The financial hub is grappling with a declining birth rate and aging population, and relies on low-wage foreign workers to help meet some of its labor needs. Of the just over 1.5 million foreign workers in the city-state as of December, nearly half either work as domestic workers or in the construction, marine shipyard and manufacturing sectors, government data shows.
Rights groups have criticized Singapore’s treatment of poorer migrants in the past, most recently when workers were confined to their dormitories for much of the pandemic to prevent further spread of Covid-19.
Francis praised Singapore’s measures to improve the quality of life for its citizens through quality public housing, education and health-care policies. These efforts should “continue until all Singaporeans are able to benefit from them fully.”
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