From Suspension of Maid Export To Maidless Society

What an interesting development from our neighbour that they have decided to suspend exporting maids to us simply based on the recent incidents affecting their citizens. I'm referring to the latest news reported under 'Jakarta suspends maid service' reported by Amy Chiew / Online Published on 26/06/2009. (http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Friday/Frontpage/20090626095603/Article/index_html)

First of all, I suspect this is just a political play by some quarters in Indonesia.

Secondly, the statistic released from some sources that there were 1,000 maid abuse cases annually in Malaysia out of the 300,000 documented Indonesian maids in the country, and this is actually a small figure and should consider quite an achievement for Malaysian since maintaining good relationship in a confined space like condominium is truly not an easy task especially the maid and the employer comes from different social background and hardly know each other before employment.

Malaysian should now rethink its labour requirement now with a wake up call from Indonesian government that we shouldn't rely on foreign workers forever.

We should start to pool our resources together to overcome the crisis in a long term basis. We should clean our home/house, do our laundry, buy our daily needs; baby sitting or daycare for kids, and other general services by sharing among all the house owners in the vicinity than individually employing maid where the social problems are not easy to learn and adjusted, and it's complicated. Government should be working closely with the community in an organized way so that services for each households are subsidized and possibly a specialized quality service company can be established to serve the needs of the public.

Malaysia is still very much stuck with the economic model based on low labour cost, and it means we have to rely on Indonesia heavily on its supply, especially in plantation sector. It's unfortunate that Indonesia happens to be our competitor at the same time. The security threat is obvious and not logical to believe that brotherhood would work when conflict flares up. We can recall at the recent years of events and we know very well that we can only trust ourselves and has to be totally independent from our 'unstable' neighbour, no matter how 'cheap' the offer is. The crisis has highlighted our vulnerability of our econmy and country strength, not only that, it's the insult of our dignity by our insensitive neighbour that really hurts.

Our country should study the living styles and habits in other more advanced and developed countries where labour cost is high, and employing domestic maid is definitely not for every one. We should therefore learn one thing or two by studying how to handle their daily chores, and the answer should not be far from us.

The Government should orchestrate the change.

Change the way we live and work now will be the key to high earning, quality environment in foreseeable future.

做对也要致歉?

(吉隆坡4日讯) 马华署理总会长拿督斯里蔡细历医生说，如果他的“马来主权”言论让马华领导层感到为难及无法面对舆论，他感到抱歉.

"如果马华总会长拿督斯里翁诗杰以及副总秘书拿督陆垠佑认为我的言论让他们‘很难做人’，我要向党特别是他们俩致歉."

=====================================================================

拿督斯里蔡细历医生的言論并无不妥,至少在沙巴州是絕对可以接受的.

他的这番言論是肺腑之言,不虚伪,中肯及爱护国阵的;甚至是维护馬华(华人)之余还兼顾巫統(馬来人)的政治利益.

这祇不过是一些封建思想人士所不能接受的言論而已.

他的演讲内容已完全符合我国宪法及联合国的人权宪章.

难道是忠言逆耳?

难道鼓吹”改变(Change)”是可怕的思维?

与时并进的精神何在啊?

之前大家热烈吹捧的”308后要改革”的兴致又去了那理?

如果拿督斯里蔡细历医生为了”对”的言論而要向一些人致歉的话,那整个华社,馬来社會或各族人民也要向那些不想改变(或不敢,也不愿)的少数人致萬分的歉意了!