Population increase due to foreign workers

Monday, 29 June 2015

Population increase due to foreign workers

 

I REFER to the letter “Increase in population will have negative effects” by Dr A. Soorian (The Star, June 25).

I must say that he is right in all respects regarding population explosion and climate change.

Governments, in his view, should be more circumspect in implementing policies that could cause more harm to the environment in the long term, and can have disastrous social consequences too.

But the much respected doctor has omitted to mention that, for Malaysia at least, the damage to the environment and the nation’s social fabric due to “population” increase is already taking place in front of our own eyes, in the form of foreign workers “imported” to support our low-wage economic policies.

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What is worse is that such a policy has invariably attracted much illegal migration at out porous borders, and human trafficking too, as the recent exposure of mass Rohingya graves at our northern borders has borne out.

If Malaysia is to play its part in combating climate change and economic degradation, it has to, to borrow another writer’s words, think out of the box, and have a stiff political spine too.

For example, is our hotly touted “high income” nation status to be continuously fuelled by cheap, even illegal labour?

 http://www.thestar.com.my/opinion/letters/2015/06/29/population-increase-due-to-foreign-workers/