Go tough with overstayers

Sin Chew Daily Asia News Network Selangor, Malaysia

Foreign laborers have taken Malaysia in a big way and some unhealthy phenomena and social issues have been seen as inevitable fallout.

We should remember that Indonesian workers created some commotions in the country not that long ago, seriously threatening the security of this country. Foreign maids, meanwhile, have also become the root of family problems while some of them have also fallen victim to cases of maltreatment and violence.

And because the situation has become so serious nowadays that the government should not ignore their mere existence anymore. As a result, expulsion orders have been passed down and foreign laborers working in a broad spectrum of industries have been sent packing.

Mass inflow of foreign workers is itself an unhealthy social phenomenon and is likely to generate a host of social issues such as strikes, riots, maltreatment of employers' kids by maids, and of maids by their employers, not to mention the robberies perpetrated by Indonesian workers here.

Nevertheless, when women complained to the government that overstaying Chinese ladies have seduced their husbands and destroyed their families, deputy home minister Chor Chee Heung replied that these women should stop complaining but instead "watch their own husbands properly".

According to Chor, these women have not been able to manage their families properly that they try to put the blame on the authorities. To the deputy minister the extramarital affairs involving Chinese ladies have nothing much to do with the government, and as long as the wives are willing to "take care of their husbands properly", their husbands would most definitely behave themselves.

Chor's rhetoric is by no means novel, but it can only come from the mouth of a man, not a deputy minister. Only old- fashioned men would still think that a wife should be blamed for her husband's indecent behavior. As a man, Chor should know that men are easily seduced by women, but his irresponsible remarks -- not unlike what superstar Jackie Chan has said, "I've done something that all men would do," -- do not go well with his stature as a deputy minister.

It is nevertheless understandable that perhaps after Chor met the visiting delegates from the Department of Laborer Protection of China, he made the above remarks just to please his guests in the name of "promoting Sino-Malaysian cooperation".

A supposedly complicated issue involving family values has suddenly been simplified by our deputy minister into a lesson directed at Malaysian women.

If we are unable to stop importing foreign laborers to meet the country's development needs, at least we should learn how to control them.

In this respect, the government has the obligation to round up overstaying foreign workers.

How to effectively control overstayers remains a problem that the authorities must come face to face with. Pointing finger at women for not taking good care of their husbands while failing to understand the real picture, is utterly unfair to the "victims".