Abuse!

Sometimes I think human beings can be worse off than animals. I was out for an appointment to see a client this morning. This particular client of mine is located in an industrial area and most of the industries in this area employ a lot of foreign workers to work for them. So, I'm pretty used to seeing them in this area.

I reach my clients place and park my car and was about to step into my clients office when I hear some angry shouting coming from my left. I stop, look to see what the commotion is all about and what I saw saddened me to the very core! I never for once expected to see what I just saw.

There a couple of doors away from my clients office I saw this group of about 5 foreign workers and they were all standing in a straight line with this fierce and angry looking guy in a tie screaming at one of the workers rather harshly. Ok, no issues there, I guess he's the boss and one of them must have done something wrong at work or something. It's not like I haven't experienced being chewed out like that by my boss.

But what he does next stops me straight in my tracks. While screaming at one of the workers in the line, he raises his hand and slaps the poor chap right across his face! Not once, but two or three times and even screams obscenities at this guy. And the poor fellow just stands there and takes the abuse without saying a word in his defense. Even the other four guys just stood there quietly with their heads bowed.

Whatever that foreign guy may have done, I don't think he deserved to be treated like that, especially to get humiliated that way in public. I was speechless. I just stood there as with a few other people and just stared at the whole scene in a surreal kinda way. I've never ever seen such a thing in my entire life before. The whole screaming and hitting stopped pretty soon with the guy in the tie pushing them all back into the factory to continue with their work.

That was when I realized that a lot of employers here who hire foreign workers treat them like animals at times. I've read countless horror stories about how these foreign workers are mistreated and abused and never paid much heed to it until having seen what I just saw.

To most of these monster employers, these foreigners are cheap labour and can be pushed around. Now don't get me wrong, a lot of employers are nice people and treat their foreign workers well but there are also a lot who are really sadists!

We have a lot of foreigners here, sometimes a little too many if you ask me, but they're also human beings who leave their family behind to seek a better life so that they may be able to help out their families back home. And instead, a lot of them end up getting cheated by their employers who ill treat them, pay them chicken feed and make them work long hours everyday, stuff about 30-40 of them in one dinghy little hut or two room house with hardly any basic amenities and keep their passports locked so they can't go out. Don't they employers have a heart?

And we say Malaysians are a caring lot! Hah, I'd like to find the person that said that and smack him silly! Most Malaysians treat foreigners like the plague. Just because they work in such menial jobs doesn't mean they should be treated any less.

They don't realize that these foreigners are willing to undertake such dirty jobs that most Malaysians with half the intelligence of these foreigners would shun. They don't want to work as some low paying grass cutter or garbage man or even some lowlife cleaner. They just want some high paying CEO post even though they can't speak a word of English or even know what 1 + 1 is.

And these foreigners willingly (or sometimes with no other choice) take up these jobs yet most of the time that get abused by their employers and are shunned as some kind of 'bad' people by us. And I am VERY ASHAMED to say that I am sometimes in the category of these 'bad' people. No, I've never abused or mistreated or even hit any of these foreigner but I've had my fair share of misgivings towards them.

And I'm not at all proud of my attitude. These people are human and work as hard, sometimes even harder that I do and yet they're willing to work even more harder just to make sure their families back home have a better life.

And a lot of these foreigners are actually nice people. I remember the guys who cut my mango tree. They were so accommodating and friendly and never complained when I asked the to cut this or cut that or clean this or clean that. They had perpetual smiles on their faces even though it was extremely tough work trying to cut that tree.

And though I didn't pay them much, they were so happy to even get some extra income and was thanking me like as if I paid them a million bucks or something and their demeanor so impressed me that I told them to come back every month and see if there was anything they could help me with in the house like mow the lawn, trim whatever that needs to be trimmed and such. Of course I would pay them for their work.

And they were so willing to come back and assured me that they would come back every month end. Now, tell me, are these the kind of people that you would mistreat and humiliate in public by slapping them? Are these the kind of people you would have misgivings about? Granted there are a few bad apples but do we generalize all of them based on a few bad apples?

I know I don't normally post very serious postings but even I, the normally playful and happy go lucky guy gets affected by things out there sometimes. And what I saw today deeply saddened me. I wish I didn't see what I saw but I did and all the way back to the office I kept replaying that scene of the poor fellow getting abused and I honestly wished some very bad things to happen to that animal (sorry to insult all the animals) who was doing the abusing.

What goes around comes around they say and that guy will face his judgment one day and maybe god will send him back to earth as a lump of shit (forgive the language) or something ... LOL!
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