YOURSAY | ‘We are judged by how we treat our downtrodden. Paying forward has many benefits.’

Mother eats uncooked rice for three days so daughter can eat bread

Anonymous 770241447347646: Living in the city, and after paying the house rent and the other necessities, RM1,500 per month is definitely not enough to sustain a family.

There are other expenses like transport, medical, clothes, books and educational needs, besides food. The cost of living has gone up, but the average or poor person’s pay remains the same.

Anonymous 1536078333: The Economic Planning Unit (EPU) must be living in a different world to the rest of us to maintain that the national poverty rate is only 0.4 percent.

Previously, the BN government completely hoodwinked everyone by cooking up the poverty numbers to show Malaysia has progressed.

Unfortunately, the EPU under the Pakatan Harapan government is still caught up in the lies. Now we know how effective poverty programmes under BN have been, including the New Economic Policy (NEP).

Annonnymous 080: The stories highlighted in the documentaries are proof that the various government projects over the years, including the NEP, have failed to improve poverty in the country.

Alfanso: The social structure is collapsing - that is what I see in the country today.

Just giving help on an ad-hoc basis is not enough. A long-term strategy and programme are needed to eradicate poverty in Malaysia.

My Understanding: Thanks Malaysiakini for highlighting the lives of the poor people in the country.

Please continue to run such stories for the awareness of the general public as well as those who are able to contribute to the society.

Ramesh Nair: We need to share this story and spread the news, not only to help those highlighted in the videos, but also to help those around us facing similar situations.

We need more of this type of reporting to highlight the real situation on the ground.

Anonymous Debfdab: Something is not right here in Malaysia. Employers are having problems looking for workers, and yet many locals are unemployed.

Mind you, a lot of vacancies taken up by the foreigners do not need qualifications. Why aren’t the jobless locals considered for these jobs?

YTMQ: The main reason employers prefer to hire foreigners over locals is because the salary being offered is usually in the RM1,200 range.

A jobless Malaysian, like the security guard whose story is highlighted in the Freedom Film Festival, would not apply for the job because the pay being offered for a foreign worker is lower.

In fact, such salaries are not practical for most Malaysians, considering the lodging, transport and food costs. Whereas foreign workers have lower lodging expenses because up to 20 foreign workers can be crammed into a single flat or house.

The foreigners’ weaker currencies in their home countries also allow them to accept lower-salaried jobs.

When local security guards ask for a salary higher than RM1,500, Malaysian employers resort to bringing in Nepali security guards by paying them only RM1,200. After that, the Malaysian security guards are retrenched. This happens in other industries as well.

The moment some NGOs or lawmakers raise this issue, the employers' groups would rush to the Prime Minister’s Office and somehow convince the people there not to change the regulations.

This has been going on since the BN administration days and unfortunately, even now.

Clearwater: For unskilled jobs, an employer seeks low cost, responsible, diligent and disciplined workers. An employee often looks for good pay, easy job and decent working conditions.

If the job is 3D (dirty, dangerous and difficult), then locals may shun it, leaving it to the more desperate foreign workers who don’t view the jobs as poor-paying or demeaning from their perspective.

Anonymous 7702414473: We shouldn’t waste time waiting on the ministers, deputy ministers and the top civil service to solve the poverty problem in Malaysia.

How can they understand the problems of ordinary people when they are busy travelling the globe and advising other nations and their people on how to have a better quality of life.

Other countries are doing a better job at fighting for good benefits for their workers. A Filipino maid gets a RM1,600 salary with room and food supplied, while an Indonesian maid gets a minimum RM950 with food and boarding.

The Malaysian authorities, however, are getting millions more unskilled foreign workers to come into the country, while there are plenty of migrant workers here who are unregistered and living with expired documents.

Today, many of the foreign workers here earn more than RM1,500 a month. After deducting food and boarding costs, they still have money left to send home to pay off debts ,as well as to feed their families.

However, as one of the reports shows, Malaysian cleaners are made to earn the minimum basic pay for 30 years, without increment, while their cleaning contractors keep increasing their contract prices annually.

Robbed: Malaysia, when compared to most other countries in the Asean region, has a small population size with only about 30 million people.

And yet, something is gravely wrong with our system of governance if we still have cases of extreme poverty and people struggling to make ends meet on a daily basis.

The government should solve these basic issues first before going on to plan big things such as the ECRL (East Coast Rail Link) project.

Salam: Thank you, Malaysiakini. This story should inspire all of us to really look at our local neighbourhoods to reach out to families in need of help and support.

Please highlight more of such human issues. We're sick of “news” on politicians all the time.

Solo: This is trickle-down economics. Let the rich get fatter, and the poor get the little bits that trickle down.

Just look at the photos of the corrupt fat cats. Then look at the pictures of the destitute here who struggle to eat from hand to mouth.

We are judged by how we treat our downtrodden. Paying forward has many benefits.

Flabber Pro: There are so many ways of coming out of poverty. But waiting and hoping for good luck and undeserved aid will not help them out in the long run.

I have tried helping so many of them, but these people who are in poverty seem to feel that they are entitled to be helped over and over again.

Again, those that I tried helping many times, have 1,001 reasons why they shouldn't work.

If I can come out of my own poverty with so much inherited debts, they can too. But they don't want to work.

Anonymous 1550607211: I don't think the four cases depicted in the Freedom Film Fest 2019 films are lazy people wanting welfare for no work. Far from it.

What is so wrong with getting aid, coupled with work? This isn't a zero-sum game, but if we insist on a society that punishes the poor, we will all reap what a few had sown.

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