Ku Nan (Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor), we want to meet you. We want to meet the enforcement teams sent out to round up all the homeless and the beggars in the city centre (Central Market and Bukit Bintang). We want to see the centres where the folk would be housed.
We want to know the contact persons and their organisations who will be part of your vague plan that you have shared thus far.
Here is why.
We care for those whom we have been working with to get off the streets, those who have been retrenched because their companies have been downsized.
We care for those youths, aged between 24 and 28, who are depressed because jobs are given to foreign workers.
We are also concerned about single mothers whose children have no documentation because the government would not accommodate their situation. These single mothers have green identity cards and they have to renew their ICs once every three years. Invariably, these children are declared as orphans, and are adopted by other multi-racial families.
We take pity on uneducated couples who, because they do not have ICs, cannot be legally married and therefore cannot register their children (if they have) to lead a normal life they are entitled to.
We are worried about the plight of able-bodied men who need jobs immediately to live.
These do not include the addicts, the prostitutes, the pimps, the drug peddlers, the homeless and the orphans.
But, Ku Nan, you said this is your city and you need to clean it up. We hear you. You should have talked to us but you choose to rely on a small minority to make your decision.
You need not clean up. The change can happen if you allow us to be part of your plan. We are not requesting this. We demand this from you.
Dadhyanna Tan is a member of the Region of Love, a voluntary group.
