The case of migrants & internal security

Spotted this on page 6 of The SUN today:-

Press Digest by Kong See Hoh

POLICE will beef up their crime beat with 2,000 more patrol cars and additional manpower.

Deputy Internal Security Minister Datuk Fu Ah Kiow says the cabinet recently approved the additional patrol cars and manpower to maintain law and order, according to a report in Sin Chew Daily yesterday.

Fu admitted the country still face a shortage of police personnel. The police-to-population ratio in Malaysia is lower than that in many other countries.

"There is a need to recruit more personnel to improve the ratio in the long term," he said.

Fu told the daily in an interview that drug addicts and foreign workers are two main factors contributing to the high number of snatch-theft crimes. ...

********************

It is interesting to note the acknowledgment by Datuk Fu that foreign workers have contributed to the issue of escalating crime in our country.

But are we doing enough to address the problem of increasing presence of foreigners in our land, including the fact that we have even made it easy for a huge number of them to obtain citizenship (and bumiputra status with all the attendant perks & privileges) for reasons best known to our government?

Look at the following report also from The SUN:-

More than five million alien workers by 2010, says Fong

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia is likely to have more than five million alien workers by 2010, if the employers' current thirst for foreign labour is not quenched, Human Resources Minister Datuk Seri Dr Fong Chan Onn said today (Aug 11, 2006).

"We now have about 1.8 million foreign workers. Local employers are submitting a large number of applications monthly to the Home Ministry to employ more foreign workers.

"If this problem is not addressed now, it is highly probable that the total number of foreign workers in this country may well exceed five million by the year 2010," he said in a luncheon address at the Law Association for Asia and Pacific (Lawasia) Labour Law Conference here.

He said the country had to deal with various aspects of foreign labour, especially in areas pertaining to legal and social framework like terms and conditions of employment, orientation and skills training, protection under the employment laws, security of tenure, social security and insurance, trade unionism, industrial relations and industrial adjudication.

********************

1.8 million foreign workers now ... possibly more than 5 million in 2010!! (How many millions more originally foreign workers now legally absorbed into our community as citizens of Malaysia?)

You do the maths as against the population of those Malaysians who have been here prior to Merdeka and whose parents and grandparents have settled here for more than 2 generations before we are allowed to call ourselves Malaysians.

And I'm not just referring to the mostly Indonesian-born new citizens in the Peninsular but just look at what is happening in Sabah & Sarawak. We have thrown our gates wide open to migrants in such an indiscriminate fashion that it has now come back to haunt us in ways that we are just beginning to comprehend.

Can these people fend for themselves during less than prosperous times? If our country is affected by a global economic downturn and decent-paying jobs become scarce for them, what will happen to them and the families they had brought along to live here? Will they return to their countries of birth or will they be a burden to their adopted country?

********************

Anyway, coming back to the issue of public safety in Malaysia, I am glad that the cabinet has recognised the urgency to restore some semblance of law and order in our country.

It will take some years to beef up our police force but better late than never. I hope more allocations will be set aside in the upcoming budget to increase our police workforce and do all that is necessary to restore the image of our law enforcers in the eyes of the jaded public.

Whatever happened to the IPCMC proposal, by the way? That is one good suggestion which has yet to see the light of day.