Media statement by M. Kula Segaran MP Ipoh Barat and DAP National Vice
Chairman in Ipoh on 6th October 2013
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Indian
poor need remedial help big time
While debating the Prevention of Crime Act (PCA) in Parliament earlier
this week, Home Minister Zahid Hamidi let drop an astounding statistic. He said
figures compiled by the police revealed that there were 3,000-plus gangsters
who are Malays, 9,000-plus Chinese thugs and 29,000-plus Indian hoodlums.
I immediately stood up and pressed the minister for clarification. My
skepticism stemmed from the figures with respect to Indian gangsters.
The percentage of Indians in the overall Malaysian population of 28.3
million hovers just above the 7% mark which translates into about 1.8 million
people. From that angle, it beggars belief that Indians constitute 60% of the
gangsters, according to the figures disclosed by Zahid in Parliament.
It is true that at one time, at the detention centre in Simpang Renggang,
Indian detainees comprised 60% of the inmates. Despite that statistic, the
figure of 29,000-plus Indian thugs in an overall population of 41,000-plus
hoodlums smacks of hyperbolic exaggeration.
I suggest a more constructive starting point for Zahid. He could do well
to refer to a paper on Indian gangsterism compiled by a senior police officer a
couple of years back.
In it , Amar Singh who was until recently deputy CPO of Kuala Lumpur,
offered reasons for the high percentage of Indian youths in criminal
activities.
Amar suggested that the fragmentation of estates where plantation
agriculture was once practised on a large scale and their takeover for
industrial and residential purposes resulted in Indian youths being dispersed
to the nearby towns and cities where their poor educational qualifications and
virtual absence of technical skills meant they formed the unemployed or
under-employed of the semi- and urban population.
This condition was rife for the youths sliding into drug-taking and
drug-dealing activity, membership in extortion rackets, illegal gambling,
prostitution and other forms of vice.
The only way to prevent more Indian youths from traveling the same path
towards self-destruction is to provide them with better educational and
technical training opportunities, small loans to start businesses, and for
those qualified heightened employment in the civil service.
In 1970, there were over 17% Indians in the civil service. Now there are
less than 5% Indians in the service. The GLCs are dominated by the Malays while
the Chinese are strongly represented in the private sector. Indians inhabit the
margins of both the civil and private sectors.
These undeniable facts help explain the accumulation by the race of some
unflattering superlatives such as that Indians compose the highest percentage
of gangsters, highest incidence of alcoholism, and most number of suicides.
I suggest the immediate setting up of a Parliamentary Select Committee
composed of government and the opposition MPs to come up with solutions to this
problem and the mechanism by which to monitor the implementation of measures
for poverty alleviation among Indians.
The Indian poor require government help to drain the pool of hopelessness
on which Indian gangs thrive and poverty breeds.
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