Rich society, poor souls?
12/11/2006 The Star MIND MATTERS BY RAJA ZARITH IDRIS

IN his book Beyond the Age of Innocence, Kishore Mahbubani (Singapore’s former ambassador to the United Nations) wrote: “Most of my childhood was spent in a one-bedroom house where six of us lived ... Having lived among these conditions, I know that what truly kills the poor is not just their poverty. It is their lack of hope that tomorrow would be better than today, or the hope that their children could be better off than they are.”

Here in Malaysia, we must make the poor believe that there is hope.

The poor live among us, despite official figures and statistics showing that we live in a prosperous country.

Our GNI (gross national income) per capita is US$4,960, compared to India’s US$720, Indonesia’s US$1,280, the Philippines’s US$1,300, China’s US$1,740 and Thailand’s US$2,750.

There are, of course, other countries that are doing better than us: the GNI per capita for Taiwan is US$13,320; Singapore’s is US$27,490; and Japan’s is US$38,980. (Source: World Bank data, 2006)

But figures and statistics aside, we have a simpler method for deciding if there are Malaysians who are still poor: we just have to look around us.

There are many examples to show that even in cities such as Johor Baru, there are still many families who live in far from comfortable circumstances.

On the way to a shopping mall or a hotel, I can see the marked disparity between gleaming tall buildings and run-down huts. There are impressive new structures that have been built around the city but on lonelier roads there are also many dilapidated wooden houses with haphazardly attached zinc roofs and plywood walls.

On the road that takes us to Singapore, I can see the same shabby blocks of flats that I saw (they are hard to miss) when I began my life in this city as a young bride more than 20 years ago.

The good news is that the tenants in these flats will be moved to newer and less cramped apartments.

An old makcik who used to come over whenever I needed an urut (massage) lived in these old blocks of flats. She told me that the elevators didn’t work. During Raya, she and her husband would have to shift their sofa and other furniture out onto the corridor so that their children and grandchildren had space to sleep in the one-room flat.

Then there are the people we don’t really want to acknowledge because they do not fit in with our advertisements’ depictions of happy, smiling and neatly dressed families.

One local women’s magazine did a write-up of some children who live along Chow Kit Road, Kuala Lumpur.

The pictures of their rooms showed their pitiful situation: a dirty mattress on the floor served as a bed; there was no furniture; the boys’ belongings lay in plastic bags or were piled up on the bare cement floor; and a light bulb hung crookedly from the ceiling.

With the magazine in hand, I looked around me and saw my sons’ computer tables, their toys, their books, their CDs and DVDs, the TV, the fridge, their clothes in wardrobes, and their towels, soap and shampoo in the bathroom.

Did I feel guilty? Yes.

Did I feel blessed? Yes.

Parveen Gill also wrote about these same children in an article for this paper: “Circumstances beyond their control have made the streets of Chow Kit their dingy home and unwelcome playground.

“Some are forced to tag along with their sex worker mothers as they ply their trade. Others share a run-down wooden house or a small room in a shoplot with their siblings, waiting for their mothers to return home.

“Most do not have much to eat and sometimes resort to stealing to feed themselves.

“At night, some of these children, who are said to number in the hundreds in Chow Kit alone, sleep on the pavements.” (Sunday Star, July 9, 2006)

If we can raise millions of ringgit for people in other countries, then we can surely help those who are much nearer to us. Whether they make photogenic subjects or should be hidden from sight, they are part of our community and therefore part of our conscience.

Even though government agencies do a lot to help the poor, it is still not quite enough: we have to pitch in and do our bit too.

It is not enough for us to appear affluent for superficial, cosmetic reasons, or because “Visit Malaysia Year 2007” is just around the corner.

Let’s also have an affluence of spirit and prove that we can help the poor because we care and because we can.

This writer can be reached at: mindmatters@thestar.com.my