WE ARE FAMOUS
When it comes to getting bad press, Malaysia is an over-achiever. The country and its people seem to always be in the limelight for all the wrong reasons, one after another.
The focus du jour is a certain murder intrigue, last week was the maid escape, and a few weeks before were the bocor brouhaha. So depressing, so embarrassing, so exasperating.
I was in Indonesia last week, and Ceriyati the poor maid made news everywhere. Her plight received the attention of all major newspapers and TV stations. There were demonstrations in the city, particularly near the Malaysian embassy, where her family members rightly demanded justice.
(I wish Malaysians were as spirited as their Indonesian brethrens, so that every time a Malaysian citizen is robbed, raped or murdered by Indonesians living here, we would all be motivated to hold demonstrations. And at the rate crimes are committed nowadays, we could hold demonstrations every day).
Anyway, a few years ago, domestic help abuse was rather unheard of in Malaysia. Often times, cases of abuse happened only in our southern neighbour. I worked in that tiny republic then, and almost every week you’d read of people somewhere hurting their maid. Now, it’s happening more in Malaysia.
According to a report by Foreign Correspondent, Malaysia has become Asia’s largest importer of labour, most of whom come from neighbouring Indonesia. Across the country Indonesian maids are keeping house and minding children, freeing up the country’s middle class to make money. Ninety five per cent of the maids are from Indonesia. Coming here to work is well within their comfort zone because they speak almost a similar language and most are Muslim.
But once they are here, the story take a different turn for some unfortunate few. Some are sexually abused, some physically harmed, while some others don’t get paid.
Officials at the Indonesian embassy in Kuala Lumpur, which has sheltered thousands of allegedly abused maids, say they have a pattern along employers’ racial make-up.
The Ambassador was quoted as saying: “If sexual harassment, it must be done by Indian ethnics. And for torture, slapping and so on, it’s by Chinese employer, while payment problems are from Malays."
Whatever it is, something must be done, and quickly too, to stop the abuse. There has been a lot of talk, but little action, taken. The onus must be on the government – both Indonesian and Malaysian – to work on the solution. Change the legislation. Introduce minimum wage. Give the maids off days.
And those who abuse their maids? Give them maximum punishment. Teach them a very expensive (and painful) lesson that they have no right whatsoever to hurt another human being. The miserable few hundred ringgit they pay a month (if they do pay) do not earn them a slave who’d be on their beck and call 24/7.
If all fails, perhaps we can all devise a way to let them taste their own medicine.

WHEN YOU FACE DEATH, DIRECT ACCESS IS BEST
(Telekom Malaysia today clarifies a few things in the NST over its 999 number. Please see my additional text.)
From next year, only 999 will, again, be used as the common number for all emergency calls. This, says Internal Security, is “in line with efforts to coordinate all emergency calls made to the police, health and fire and rescue departments as well as other security agencies”, which currently use different numbers. The move is also made to “overcome the problem of ‘missed’ and crank calls, it says. And Telekom Malaysia has been tasked to handle the new system.
Under the current system, the 999 number is for police and ambulance, 991 for Civil Defence Department and 994 for Fire & Rescue. The latter two numbers were introduced in 1991, ironically to address the problem of missed and unanswered 999 calls back then.
I guess a single number is a good idea, as there would be less confusion on the part of the public over which number to call during emergency situations. What’s not such a good idea, in my humble (and maybe ill-informed) opinion, is to let Telekom Malaysia operate the number, when the police has been requesting that all distress calls be directly routed to its command centres to reduce the time it would take to respond to emergencies.
According to NST, the police have contended for years that emergency response times could be drastically reduced if 999 calls are patched through directly to its dispatchers. The police also believe that emergency response times would continue to be slow while Telekom Malaysia operators take emergency calls because 999 is a "hunting" line. At present, emergency calls are handled by the same operators who usually handle enquiries on telephone number listings. (Telekom Malaysia says 999 is not a hunting line, and calls to this line are not put on queue. The calls are also handled by emergency service centre staff, and not the operators who also handle regualr enquiries).
This means a call put through from Kuala Lumpur to 999 could be picked up by an operator in Kuala Terengganu or Kuching if the operators in the city are busy, for example. Delays arise when operators unfamiliar with streets and addresses in the city spend valuable seconds or minutes determining the exact location of a caller who may well be facing a life and death situation. (Telekom Malaysia says it takes six seconds to verify emergency calls, and another 10 seconds to hand over the call to the relevant parties such as the police or ambulance.)
The Telekom operator would also have to spend time locating the correct police station or command centre to relay the information. Such delays appear to have driven the police to set up their own hotline service, Rakan Cop, in 2004. The service has helped speed up police response times tremendously. But this could be even quicker if 999 calls are patched through directly to police command centres, according to NST’s sources. (See above paragraph).
According to NST also, Telekom Malaysia refuses to hand over control of the 999 number to police unless it is paid between RM500 million and RM1 billion for its user database, to which the police need access to facilitate faster response time.(Telekom Malaysia denies ever asking for money for its subscriber database. It says 999 is a free service as part of its social obligation, and caller information is given free on a call-to-call basis)
Like millions of other Malaysians, I am extremely anxious over this. When you are faced with a life and death emergency situation, you’d want to receive assistance within the fastest possible time. In my opinion, unless Telekom Malaysia has something brilliant up its sleeve to improve the current situation, it would be best to leave the handling of 999 calls directly in the hands of the police.
(Telekom Malaysia says it has been working with the police for the past 30 years, and from its experience, only one per cent of the more than 40,000 emergency calls it receives daily are genuine. The rest are crank calls. Telekom says it sees its role as a filter service provider to ensure only genuine calls get to the police or other emergency response bodies.)
But then, what do I know?

WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY
Today the whole world observes Environment Day. Across the globe, new initiatives, campaigns and pledges are launched, implemented or promised, some costing millions and millions of dollars.
Well and good, I say. Let’s hope that these initiatives, campaigns and pledges are all long-term efforts geared towards achieving sustainable results and lasting difference in our life and the lives of our children.
But we cannot just leave this responsibility of taking care of our earth to the government, NGOs and other bodies alone.
We all know how “efficient” the government is at managing the environment, kan? And most NGOs -- bless them – while strong in will are lacking in resources.
So we all must do our part. Actually there are so many little things that we can do. And all these little things, when practiced collectively, will make a huge difference.
Today’s NST lists down some suggestions on Page 17. And part of its editorial says this:
“… there is every reason to nurture the small initiatives of individuals choosing to shun plastic bags or private transport, or learning to recycle household waste, switch off lights and conserve water in their lives.
It is in such baby steps that the true distance can be covered, perhaps not towards reversing the monumental forces of climate change now upon us, but slowing them down long enough to ensure humanity a chance to adapt and forestall environmental catastrophe, and survive on a planet so grievously changed by the rapacious activities of just one species — our own Homo sapiens.”

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