Singapore ex-con turns over new leaf to win back children

Azman (not his real name) has been in and out of jail so many times, he’s lost count.

After spending nearly a quarter of his life in prison, the 38-year-old decided enough was enough.

During his most recent stint, the former drug addict watched from behind bars as his two children, aged eight and seven, grew up and went to primary school. When he finally went home after three years in lock-up, it was not quite the welcome he expected.

 
“They were scared of me, like I wasn’t their father. There was a distance between us,” recalled Azman, who is married to a 35-year-old clerk.
 
It was sufficient motivation for him to quit the drug habit that had led to his repeated incarcerations.
 
“If I didn’t leave that life behind, my next sentence would have been a minimum seven years,” he said, his easy-going nature belying a steely motivation. “I won’t be that stupid.”
 
Azman also grew determined to do better than the S$1,000 salary he was earning as a port worker – if only to give his family the “good life” he never had.

Chequered beginnings
 
The oldest of seven siblings, Azman had barely started secondary school when he took on part-time work on weekends as a golf caddy, for S$40 a day.
 
The cash was a welcome boost to the measly 50 cents daily pocket money he received. With a monthly salary of S$800, his father, the sole breadwinner, struggled to provide for their family of nine.
 
It was then that Azman, who was in the Express stream at Bukit View Secondary, had his first brush with narcotic abuse – through Erimin, a relaxant also known as “Five”. He rapidly lost interest in studying and promptly dropped out in Secondary 3.
 
With little else to do, Azman stuck with the group of boys that got him hooked on Five -- and before long, they were leading him deeper into the abyss with the hottest, most potent drug on the streets: heroin.

At S$20 a straw (he used to inhale or “chase” the opiate), it quickly became an expensive hobby.
 
It was also a dangerous one – the penalty for possession of over 15g heroin is death.
 
Undeterred, Azman looked for odd jobs to fund the habit, first working as a window cleaner and later, a store clerk before he was packed off to National Service (NS).

Road to ‘havoc’
 
Upon enlisting in 1993, he was deployed as a pipe fitter in the Singapore Civil Defence Force’s decommissioned Construction Brigade, and put through grueling work on buildings and roads.
 
It was here that Azman went AWOL (absent without leave) a total of 13 times – to avoid the urine tests that would expose his heroin addiction.
 
Quitting was never on his mind because quite simply, he "didn't care".

In each instance, the law caught up with him: from 1995 to 2000, Azman flitted in and out of year-long terms that took him from the detention barracks in Jalan Bahar to jail in Selarang Park and the now-defunct Tampines and Queenstown Remand Prisons.
 
Azman was done with NS only after seven long years -- five more than the typical duration.
 
“I didn’t have anyone. I didn’t think about family,” he said. “Plus a sentence of one to two years, for me, was nothing… That’s why I went havoc with drugs (sic).”

Addicted again
 
Fresh out of jail, Azman had his first taste of the difficulties faced by ex-convicts in securing stable employment.
 
For the next three years, he drifted along as a dispatch rider, until he chanced upon a vacancy for lashing specialists at a PSA port. Friends warned that the gig – securing vessel containers – was tough, but Azman had his eye on the healthy salary that came with the work’s high-risk nature.

“Imagine walking along the edge of a structure 15-storeys high, with just a pole for support,” he described. It was worth it, said Azman, because he made nearly S$4,000 a month. It helped him save up for his marriage a year later.
 
The pay was also dependent on the amount of work put in – and he was clocking 36-hour shifts, over five days a week, with no sleep.
 
Azman pulled off this incredible feat with help from an addiction to Yaba, known as the “madness drug” for its mixture of methamphetamine and caffeine.
 
“It made me ‘hyper’ and full of energy.  Yaba didn’t let me sleep,” he recalled. “It helped with the job.”
 
Azman insisted he would skip the drug on his days off – because he was taking it “not for pleasure, but for work”. But it was an addiction nonetheless – one that he always knew would get him in trouble with the law if caught.