It goes without saying that it is crucial for paramedics and patients to communicate with each other effectively — especially when emergency treatment needs to be administered.

What happens, though, when neither can speak a common language?

Feedback forms carry request for "bilingual" paramedics

What some patients did was to submit feedback to the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF), requesting that the paramedics be "bilingual" or Mandarin-speaking.

However, this did not sit too well with some Singaporeans, as evidenced by this tweet from a Twitter user who has since taken down his post (username censored by us):

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He then shared some photos of the feedback given:

The post-it note, which translates the paragraph in Mandarin into English, reads:

"I have a suggestion, in future, SCDF personnel in the line of service or during patient assessment, could opt to utilise bilingual staff so as to improve the standards and level of service provided, as well as improve communication with patients."

Another said it would be "better" if at least one of the paramedics could speak Mandarin:

"If one of them can speak Chinese, it will be better."

"May come with difference race crews cause my father only speak Chinese. That day all the crew are Malay so very hard for them to communicate."

"It will be best if the crew is bilingual in English and Mandarin. Or there is at least one Chinese crew."

It is worth noting that the patients were not requesting that the minority races in SCDF learn to speak Mandarin; rather, they had hoped to see someone who could speak the same language as them.

Unhappiness among Singaporeans

It wasn't only one person who saw a problem with such requests.

Another user added to the discussion, arguing that if Malay-speaking seniors can learn English, the same should apply to the older generation of Chinese:

Responses on both tweets were largely of the same sentiment — i.e. everyone in the population should learn English as a unifying language for all races:

However, one user also pointed out that not all elderly Singaporeans can speak English, regardless of their race:

To which the writer of the tweet agreed.

Sadly, while this particular instance may be a matter of practicality (and not so much of racism or discrimination), racism is still very much a thing in Singapore:

We've still got a long way to go.

Top photos via Twitter user @heygayden

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