What idiocy have I just read?

Truth be told I more or less stay away from Malaysian news because… IT FREAKING PISSES ME OFF THAT’S WHY! Our politics are such a joke if one of them ever retire they can always go perform at Comedy Thursdays at Zouk la wtf.

But this one…. THIS ONE. I nearly checked to see if instead of Malaysian Insider, I was on fakemalaysiannews.com wtf.

OMG this is wrong and insane on so many levels I don’t even know where to start.

First of all, Tengku Adnan. Have you no empathy? Have you ever stopped to think of what it’s like to be homeless? To have no home and to live on the streets? To forage and worry about where your next meal is coming from? Or are you too rich that you can’t imagine? Is money covering your eyes that’s why?

I’m really tried to see things his way but… nah. 🙁

Tengku Adnan maintained that NGOs feeding the homeless left their litter and  creating an image problem in the city.

Oh so litter and ‘image’ is the big issue? So you’d rather deprive another human of a basic right – food – than to have litter and ‘an image problem in the city’? I see.

You think soup kitchens and homeless people are the only people in the country who litter?  Ridiculous.  If you’re so concerned about litter, why don’t you just ban all food takeaways?  No takeaways = no styrofoam boxes, no paper wrappers, etc = no litter!  Also people drop cigarette butts a lot.  Why don’t you ban cigarettes too?

“NGOs providing free food to the homeless must also fix a location to do so and not distribute the food all over the place,” he said.

THEY ALREADY DO THAT. You wouldn’t know, obviously never having gone to a soup kitchen.  Kechara Soup Kitchen only move around the city to distribute food on WEEKENDS because that’s when volunteers are available to help them do that.  On weekdays, the homeless can go to the KSK kitchen itself to get food. I haven’t volunteered at other soup kitchens but I would assume they operate the same way because it’s pretty impossible to get volunteers to do the rounds every single night.

“The image of my city is very bad. If I don’t do this sort of thing, society won’t be disciplined,” he told a news conference here today. 

Oh  it’s YOUR city? Is it called Kuadnan Lumpur? It’s not your damn city. It’s OURS.  And like it or not, it’s also the homeless’s.

Could you explain to me how “society won’t be disciplined”? Will we all go mad with the sheer freedom and run around screaming and tossing garbage in the air just because we can? Society won’t be disciplined?  When did Malaysia turn into a communist state?

Oh and since we’re on the topic of “societal discipline”, could you please let us know what you plan to do about rempits tearing down the roads and endangering the road population?  Or how about all those pesky burglaries, snatch thefts and other petty crime still happening in KL?

Tengku Adnan said the decision was taken after a meeting with Kuala Lumpur City Hall and other relevant agencies recently where hygiene issues and concerns for homeless people were among the matters discussed. 

“We give them jobs but they don’t want as it is easy to get food as these street kitchens are feeding them,” he said.

How is removing soup kitchens showing concern for the homeless? What this buffoon and his crew of equally inept colleagues don’t realize is that doing this, they are sweeping the dirt under the carpet.  Literally.  Oh got homeless people who are an eyesore in KL? Just deprive them of food and they’ll die out. Is that their train of thought because it sure seems like it is.

Homelessness is a complex social issue that arises because of varied reasons.  A lot of the time it’s because a person has fallen on bad times that they are unable to rise up from – illness to the point of losing their jobs, no family to lean on, an accident, irreparable injury.  Sometimes older people are thrown out by their families with nothing to their name.  On one of our soup kitchen rounds, we met a woman who was thrown out by her family for being HIV positive – she contracted it from her husband who was sleeping around.  Sometimes it’s just illiteracy or lack of education.  Or not possessing a birth certificate.  A lot of times it’s drugs.

All these are terrible social issues which have an extending impact on society, one of which is homelessness.  You take away their food and what do you get?  Hunger and desperation and then people resort to crime to stay alive.

On Wednesday, Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor had said that the ministry would impose fines and other penalties on the givers of alms and beggars.

He had said this was necessary to reduce the begging culture that tarnished the image of the city.

Yes, begging can be abused and beggars turned into a criminal syndicate . And yes people worry that money given to beggars will just be spent on gambling/drugs/alcohol.  That is why soup kitchens give FOOD, not money. *rolls eyes* What on earth is he talking about?

Tengku Adnan said Putrajaya had tried to help the homeless by creating jobs for them.

“We give them jobs but they don’t want as it is easy to get food as these street kitchens are feeding them,” he said.

I sincerely would like to know what efforts have been made to help these people.  And what kind of jobs are these?  Not all the homeless people we met were unemployed, but sometimes because there is no minimum wage in Malaysia, they don’t make enough to pay for a roof over their heads.  So if the government is creating jobs, I really would like to know what jobs, how many, how much the wages are, and how many homeless rejected the opportunity.

I cannot believe that a person would rather rely on free food and be homeless than to seize the chance of holding down a good job with prospects to improve their own lives.

Can you imagine what it’s like to be a homeless person?  In the day time, you find somewhere to hide because the police will arrest you.  Even if the police don’t get to you, would you dare to show your face and face the judgment of the public who will look in disgust at your dirty clothes and face?  And what if you see an acquaintance from your previous life?

Then at night you feel safe to venture out and find somewhere to sleep.  Food aside (cos I really don’t know how they’ll get food besides soup kitchens) you probably have all you own in the world inside a plastic bag, or if you’re lucky a backpack.  You may find an empty spot of pavement to sleep but then you can’t even sleep soundly cos your backpack might get stolen. You live in perpetual fear of violence and rape.  Unless you form alliances with other people on the street, you’re on your own.  No friends or family, while even strangers avert their eyes when you pass.

And to top it all off, you have no dignity.  There’s no dignity in begging or being avoided on the street.  Human dignity is what makes someone a person.  It’s no wonder so many on the streets either go mad or turn to drugs/alcohol.

So you have no money, no house, no security, no safety, no friends, no future, and no dignity.  Tengku Adnan, you think it’s worth giving all this up for one free meal a day on the streets?

And he said this during Ramadhan.

Tengku Adnan, somewhere out there is a tree, tirelessly producing oxygen so you can breathe. I think you owe it an apology.

Original news article here.

My blog post on my soup kitchen experience here. Fatty’s here.