Singapore F&B players giving former convicts, addicts a second chance

Siti Hannah Hasan (third from right) acts as a mother figure for her fellow staff at Eighteen Chefs, some of whom are former probationers. (Photo: Nurul Azliah / Yahoo Newsroom)

For customers dining at Eighteen Chefs’ Cathay Cineleisure outlet, Siti Hannah Hasan may appear to be a regular restaurant manager.

But to her staff, some of whom are former probationers from the Singapore Boys’ Hostel, she is seen as a mother figure in whom they can confide their problems and seek advice from.

Affectionately known as Umi Hannah (Umi means “mother” in Arabic) she was the highlight of her boss’ latest Facebook post, which has garnered more than 5,000 reactions since being posted on Monday (16 May).

Restaurant chain owner Benny Se Teo, 56, said that the 49-year-old single mother of four had made her way up the career ladder to become a manager since joining the service crew five years ago.

“We don’t just provide job opportunities, we carve out career paths for all our employees,” said Se Teo.

The post received more than 300 shares and over 200 comments, with many of the commenters praising Se Teo for his commitment to providing a fair workplace environment for his staff, some of whom are also ex-convicts and former drug addicts. Se Teo himself is a reformed drug addict.

During a recent phone interview with Yahoo Singapore, Siti said the male former probationers she works with look up to Se Teo as a role model.

The Singapore Boys’ Hostel is an approved institution catering to young male probationers up to the age of 21. It helps to rehabilitate juvenile offenders deemed to be at high risk of offending.

The boys had tried working at other food and beverage (F&B) outlets, but felt that Eighteen Chefs was the only place they could work at without having to experience prejudice and feel like “they are being looked down upon”, said Siti.

“I pity these boys, from the stories they share with me. It looks like they don’t have a mother’s love. Over here (at Eighteen Chefs), everybody calls me ‘Mummy’,” she said.

“I learnt a lot from these boys too. As I grow closer to them, I can understand my own sons better,” added Siti, whose sons are between 18 and 24 years old.

Eric Ng, owner of the Wow Wow West food stall, has been providing training and job opportunities for reforming drug addicts for close to 10 years. (Photo: Nurul Azliah / Yahoo Newsroom)

Eighteen Chefs is not the only F&B outlet in Singapore that has supported ex-convicts and former drug addicts on their journey to recovery.

Another eatery in Bukit Merah - Wow Wow West at the ABC Brickworks Market & Food Centre - has been training and providing job opportunities to reforming drug addicts in Singapore for close to 10 years.

Owner Eric Ng said he found a “calling” to help troubled Singaporeans at a time when his rebellious teenage daughter kept running away from home. He was cooking at the Raffles Institution canteen at the time.

According to Eric, he believed that his prayers for his daughter to change her behaviour were not being answered because he had not done enough to “serve God” by way of doing more good in his life.

The 52-year-old then decided to volunteer at Breakthrough Missions, a drug rehabilitation halfway house, where he trained former drug addicts to become cooks. Today, his now 28-year-old daughter is married and works as an educational trainer at The Learning Lab.

He continued to provide training after opening his own food outlet, selling popular Western cuisine such as fish and chips, pork chops and chicken chops.

Some come to him for training for periods lasting a year, six months or a week. But there have also been occasions when trainees would come for just half a day of learning, because they cannot cope with the stress.

“I would call them chefs because I want them to have an image they can look up to, so they won’t feel down. I’ve sacked a guy 11 times because he kept falling back into drugs. But I love him because he was kind-hearted, except that he was brought up in a family that was into drugs,” said Eric.

He has helped more than 100 drug addicts, seven of whom have committed suicide mainly due to financial pressures from spending too much on drugs.

“I pity them sometimes. Some of them don’t have friends, they only have friends who would hide from the police because they want to try and sell drugs,” he added.

The struggle to help

Some of the drug addicts whom he has helped have tried to take advantage of his goodwill. Regardless of this, his drive to help them remains strong.

“There was one who would visit me at the store repeatedly to ask me for money. He said he needed it to buy milk powder for his baby. But it turned out he was using (the money) to buy drugs,” he said. Afterwards, he decided to buy the milk powder himself instead of giving money.

He has even gone out of his way to lock some of the drug addicts in their own homes - after being given consent by the addicts themselves - to make sure they do not leave to buy more drugs.

“They needed to be completely clean from drugs before they entered the halfway house because it’s a way of showing the house that they are determined to change. I needed to do that to make sure they didn’t fall back… I would visit them every morning to give food, and then lock them up again,” said Eric, who had once used seven padlocks for one of the drug addicts’ homes.

Surprisingly, the addict was still able to escape, he added. “Now he is in prison for 13 years. I still go and visit him.”

Eric holds a regular prison visitor’s pass and uses it to see the people he used to help at least once a month.

“It’s a really difficult journey… just show them your love and slowly they will come to know that they are not bad guys,” he said.

According to 2015 statistics from the Singapore Prison Service (SPS), there were a total of 9,602 prison inmates in Singapore and 1,419 people in the Drug Rehabilitation Centres (DRCs).

A total of 10,807 prisoners and 1,172 DRC inmates were released in the same year.

The SPS also said that 2,042 inmates secured jobs prior to their release in 2015 - a 9.5 per cent increase from the 1,865 in 2014 - through the Singapore Corporation of Rehabilitative Enterprises (SCORE), which actively engages employers from the F&B, hospitality, logistics and manufacturing industries to encourage them to hire ex-offenders.