Dirty, cheap Malaysians who steal food from the needy

I am totally disgusted and very, very angry.

There are actually heartless Malaysians stealing from the poor and needy. This is really sick to the core. And what do they steal? Food, people. Food, glorious food!

Their fellow Malaysians are hungry, the sick and elderly at home are hungry, children and babies are hungry. But what do these people care?

As long as it is a government contract, there is the opportunity to make a kill. They are so used to such manna falling from the sky - easy money you do not have to sweat for. Who cares if it’s stealing from the food aid meant for the poor?

I have a term for such heartless imbeciles – dirty, cheap scums of the earth. It is sad that there are people without an iota of conscience lurking around, depriving the needy of their most basic necessity to survive – food.

(I was tempted to add that “may they burn in the fires of hell for eternity”, but I shall refrain from doing so. As a Christian, I am not supposed to curse. It is a sin.)

Most of us are trying our level best in this challenging time to help alleviate the suffering of the less fortunate in our midst. We give whatever we can to help support causes to aid the poor. Some of us spend time and energy with NGOs involved in charitable work.

This is the time for Malaysians to lean on one another; the more fortunate giving a leg-up for others. This is the right and proper thing to do.

And the next thing we hear – food aid for the poor being siphoned off into someone else’s pocket. Such brutal heartlessness among Malaysians cannot be tolerated and must be vehemently condemned.

Somehow, I was not totally taken by surprise by such callous acts of some. In my April 14 article, here, I had cautioned that “of more concern to many is whether government aid meant for the needy and destitute has been siphoned off along the way.

“If an RM100 food aid is supposed to be allocated to a family, stealing RM50 from the package is unforgivable.”

It is clear now that my fears and concerns were not without basis. The Rasah case is an example and I expect there will be many more.

Yesterday, Rasah MP Cha Kee Chin claimed that the government-funded Covid-19 food aid packs were not worth RM100 a pack as promised.

He said his office received 150 packs on Wednesday, but he and his team found that the total value of each packet of food aid was only worth around RM35.

This is from the 1,000 Covid-19 food aid packs for the B40 lower-income group to help them during the current movement control order (MCO) and which the Perikatan Nasional government said had been allocated for each parliamentary constituency.

According to Cha, there were only seven items in the orange packet which were five kilogrammes of rice, one kilogramme of cooking oil, one packet of rice vermicelli, a packet of biscuits, tea and instant coffee.

“The food pack probably cost, at most, RM35,” he added.

All of us must surely know the price of essential food items at the grocery store. What the MP sees is what he gets. The items he sees with his own eyes before him do not lie. They are really worth at most RM35.

The Ah Pek, Makcik or elderly homemaker who has never been to school will also know the value. They also want to know what happened to the balance of the RM65. Disappeared into thin air?

Imagine a request for 2,000 packs for a constituency. A sum of RM65 short for a package of food aid means a total of RM130,000 has gone missing. This is serious.

The final score is this – our delivery system for government aid is in one hell of a mess. There are times when we believe this is deliberate because the messier it is, the more room there is for corruption and sleazy deals.

As most of the food aid is distributed by the Social Welfare Department, an agency under the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development, the ministry has a lot of explanation to do.

So, too, the government lawmakers who are directly responsible for handling the food aid allocations in their respective areas.

They must be told that it is wrong if their aides or party workers take a cut from the food aid allocation as payment for their distribution work.

I’m glad that a Sarawak minister has informed me that he paid his frontliners from his own pocket for their help in the distribution process.

I must also thank some lawmakers who took the trouble to send me the list of their recipients of food aid and the amount spent. Well done.

Let me repeat my suggestion to all lawmakers: Furnish a public account of how your allocations have been spent, how many families have benefitted and in which areas of your respective constituencies.

This is about trust, accountability and transparency.

More importantly, that will leave little or no room for the scums of the earth to steal food from the hungry and starving.

Not doing enough for the poor and needy is morally wrong; stealing from them is pure evil.

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FRANCIS PAUL SIAH heads the Movement for Change, Sarawak (MoCS) and can be reached at sirsiah@gmail.com - Mkini