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Singaporean's TikTok video defends migrant workers after viral 'You all are all no use' clip
Carmen Ortega posted a video on social media featuring clips of migrant workers working in Singapore.
PHOTO: Screengrab/TikTok/confessionsofagrabdriver
PUBLISHED ONNovember 04, 2025 4:53 PM
BYVihanya Rakshika
SINGAPORE — When Carmen Ortega, a 39-year-old private hire driver, posted a video on social media in response to a viral clip of migrant workers being berated at a void deck, she did so because she wanted to "share my truth".
In that earlier video, which emerged on social media platforms in mid-October, a man confronts at least three migrant workers resting on mats at the void deck of a Housing Board block. He questions them repeatedly, asking who had allowed them to sleep there, saying: "Here is not your grandfather's place, OK. This is not nice, you know." Before walking away, he adds: "You all are all no use."
Ortega, a Singaporean who runs the Instagram page Confessions Of A Grab Driver, told The Straits Times she felt compelled to respond after seeing the clip. "I feel for them," she said of migrant workers. "Grab drivers face the same stigma too. People have so many misunderstandings."
Her Instagram reel, which was posted on Oct 26, has since received more than 11,800 likes, 585 comments and 1,400 reposts. On TikTok, the video has been viewed over 203,000 times.
It features a compilation of clips of migrant workers cleaning rooftops, sweeping streets, performing late-night maintenance in road tunnels and keeping public spaces tidy, often at ungodly hours. It also showed their cramped living conditions and early morning routines.
'They build our city while we sleep'
In the video, Ortega rebukes the critic of the migrant workers, saying: "You call them useless, but can you do any of these jobs with the salary they are getting?"Their pay is low only because our currency is powerful.
"Back home, many of them can afford land, farms and homes with what they earn here. They are not poor. They are just working hard for a dream.
"Many of them wake up at 5am or 4am and still work till midnight. They build our city while we sleep.
"I just want you to know that we are not better than them. We are just luckier because we won the birth lottery, to be born in a country like Singapore.
"Our race, jobs or nationality don't define us..."Be kind, because they are doing the jobs that we can't, or we won't."
Several netizens supported her message, including one who identified himself as migrant worker Sharry Khan. "I am a degree holder... I decided to leave my country and come here to earn some more money and started as a labourer," he wrote. "Please treat us as human beings."
Many Singaporeans also shared words of encouragement. "They said migrant workers are always helpful, always give up seats on trains and are the first to help in times of trouble," said Ortega.
Still, she noted that not all feedback was positive, with some people accusing migrant workers of dirtying places. But she pointed out: "Locals also dirty the place. People who dirty the place will dirty any place, regardless of their job, nationality or race. It's because they are just problematic as a person, not because they are a migrant worker."
A call for mutual respect
To her, the message goes beyond sympathy. "Migrant workers don't need our 'sympathy'. What they need is empathy and mutual respect from us because they are human beings with feelings, just like us," she said.Reflecting on the unexpected attention, Ortega said: "I just want people to remember that whenever they see a negative headline with a job title - for example, 'Grab driver' or 'migrant worker' that did something - it has very little to do with the job title, but everything to do with that person."
Her video, she said, was not meant to be a statement but a mirror. "I just wanted people to see things that they normally couldn't or wouldn't."
This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.
