Are we decent enough?

I tried dutifully to read through your column, Are we decent enough? and I must express my appreciation at the noble ideas propounded therein. However, it was heavy reading, and all the while that I was going through it lugubriously, I kept remembering reading in TheStar recently of an Indian foreign worker, whose student daughter committed suicide in Chennai, because the mother was conned wholesale while being tricked into working in our beloved nation. It seems, according to the Star report, the poor lady came to work for a family, was not paid for several months, then was driven out of the house, still unpaid for her labour. She managed to find work in a restaurant, at below minimum wage, and she was conned there too, and was again driven out. She managed to contact some social workers who are arranging for her to go back to India, penniless, and finding out that working in Malaysia has been her worst nightmare. Worse still, her daughter, having enrolled in a local college was hounded for her tuition fees, and when she found out that her name was on the list of delinquent non paying students, she was so ashamed she took her own life. Can you imagine what her mother is going through now, and we ask our fellow Malaysians, "Are we decent enough"?

There are many many stories that I can relate to foreign maid/worker abuse, and even just in my neighbourhood, I can give you sufficient examples that we Malaysians, as a rule, are NOT decent at all. I will just run through some examples... no day off, no minimum wage, washing 3 cars daily, before 7 am, with no breakfast, not allowed to meet other friends, maid tasked to be a caregiver, house cleaner, gardener and grass mower, house painter, and so on and so forth.

It's a sad time to be Malaysian, and the politics don't make it better...