External News

KUALA LUMPUR, May 22 — Police have arrested two of the three men suspected of involvement in an attempt to tow a woman’s car at the Malaysian International Trade and Exhibition Centre (Mitec) last Friday and which later was made viral on social media.

Kuala Lumpur police chief Datuk Seri Mazlan Lazim said the first arrest was made after a tow truck driver surrendered at 2.20pm yesterday while his friend was detained at a hotel at 11.50pm on the same day.

“While another suspect has not surrendered and we urged the individuals to immediately surrender to assist in the investigation,” he said in a media conference at the Kuala Lumpur Police Headquarters yesterday.

He said the case was being investigated under Section 384 of the Penal Code, punishment for extortion.

Yesterday, the media reported that the three men tried to tow a Mazda car belonging to a woman after claiming the 32-year-old had an overdue bank payment for 19 months.

In another development, Mazlan confirmed that the police have received a report on the act of throwing eight empty liquor bottles at the compound of Al-Makmur surau of Sri Pantai Public Housing Programme (PPR), Jalan Pantai Dalam, last Sunday.

“We view this case as mischief and take a serious look at this incident. I also hope that people could understand each other and respect other religions,” he said.

The incident was reported around 8.30pm and ended at about 11pm when pilgrims from Block 100 and 102 of the PPR attended the Isyak and Tarawih prayers. — Bernama

IPOH, May 22 — Tourism industry players in Perak have welcomed the government’s plan to upgrade Pangkor Airport, but also hope that the promotions and developments on the island are up to standard and in accordance with the move.

Perak Tourism Association president Datuk Mohammad Odzman Abdul Kadir said that tourism stakeholders have always been in favour of an airport on Pangkor Island.

“However, our concerns are centred on the promotion and marketing efforts and the upgrading of hotels and resorts on the island plus the activities and tourism product as a whole.

“Once that is looked into, I guess we may also welcome sea planes. Anything to restore our status as the best island resort on the Peninsular’s west coast,” he told Malay Mail.

Last Saturday, the Perak government announced its plans to upgrade Pangkor Airport to attract more tourists to the island.

State Tourism, Arts and Culture Committee chairman Tan Kar Hing said he would also be meeting several parties including Malaysia Airports Holding Berhad next week to discuss ways to boost tourist arrivals on the island.

Tan also said that the government is planning to launch direct flights from Ipoh’s Sultan Azlan Shah Airport, Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport in Subang and other Malaysian aviation hubs to Pangkor.

Meanwhile, Aidil Travels and Tour Sdn Bhd CEO Mohamad Hisam Mohamad Yusof said industry players in Pangkor should be ready for change as they will be expecting a lot of foreign visitors once the airport has been upgraded.

“We might need more five-star hotels and resorts to accommodate them. The upgrading of the airport will definitely attract more tourists, as Pangkor is in the process of becoming a duty-free island too,” he said.

“This also means Pangkor will be a second gateway for visitors to Perak, and with the West Coast Expressway, which is about to be completed, this is more assuring than ever,” he added.

Mohamad Hisam also said upgrading the airport will not affect the island’s existing ferry service.

“Domestic visitors, especially those from Perak and neighbouring states, will still prefer the ferry as the mode of transportation to the island,” he said.

Private sector employers have all the reason to employ graduates who are able to speak more than one language. Politicians and university dons should not link issues surrounding the matriculation intake quota with language requirements for jobs, as these two issues are not the same.

The education ministry should be aware that commercial Chinese language skills are becoming important, and that many countries have included the teaching of this language in their education curriculum.

Being able to speak Mandarin and other foreign languages has always been an asset in the business world. Politicians and dons should stop claiming that advertisements by the private sector seeking employees with knowledge of a foreign language are discriminatory in nature. This cannot be considered ethnic-based discrimination. There are reasons as to why some sectors in the private world seek employees who can speak a specific language. It all boils down to business strategy and has nothing to do with discriminating against those who cannot speak the required language.

The private sector has to look into marketability and profitability. It’s solely for business reasons that companies require employees to be able to speak a language that can help them deal with potential clients.

Added advantage for business dealings

The private sector in the Malaysian context commonly seeks employees who are able to communicate in more than one language. For instance, if the sector deals with Mandarin or Arabic speaking nations, they would naturally seek employees who can speak Mandarin or Arabic. The private sector will always look into the practicality of doing business. At the end of the day, it’s profitability that allows them to sustain their business. What more, the country has investors from many other countries. Being able to speak the languages of these people is always an added advantage for business dealings.

Shockingly, in the recent senate session, a senator who comes from an academic background was not happy that there are job advertisements requiring candidates to be able to speak Mandarin and the Thai language. Just after that, a minister was reported to have insinuated that the matriculation quota was akin to the private sector seeking employees with certain language preferences. This must have given some the impression of “reciprocation”, that the quota favouring Bumiputera students for the matriculation programme is linked to the level of unemployment of Bumiputera in the private sector.

Unfortunately, neither of them are well informed of reality in the private business sector. They have actually become victims of misinformation. No doubt, the ownership of enterprises in the private sector is still monopolised by non-Bumiputeras. Of the 10.5 million Bumiputera workforce in the country, nine million are with the private sector and are generally employed by non-Bumiputera companies. Only about 1.5 million of them are with the civil service.

Politicians and dons should thus stop harping on private companies that look for selected employees who can speak Mandarin or any other foreign language. This chapter should be a minor concern to Malaysians. In fact, there are also other sectors in the country that recruit employees who can speak Mandarin, English or any other foreign language. As such, it’s common to see job advertisements of this nature in the country.

The Malay language is the nation’s lingua franca and candidates seeking government jobs need to have at least a pass at the SPM level in this subject. The private employment sectors out of necessity may need more than this requirement. There can be additional language requirements, depending on what sector it is.

Profitability talks

In the business world, profitability talks. In the tourism industry, for instance, it’s always an asset if employees are able to speak a few foreign languages. A reported 25.8 million tourists visited the country in 2018. Malaysia collected RM84.1 billion in overall tourism receipts last year, its highest ever. The expenditure of tourists from China made up RM12.3 billion of the total. Chinese tourists who have been the key growth driver across Southeast Asia for the past decade will continue to support Malaysian tourism growth, and the country is expecting more Chinese to visit Malaysia. Indisputably, the tourism industry would require their tourist guides to be able to speak Mandarin. Even in China, which gets many tourists from Malaysia, tourist agencies employ guides who can speak the Malay language.

On another note, Malaysia won the number one spot in the International Medical Travel Journal’s award for “Health and Medical Tourism Destination of the Year” in 2015 and 2016. This recognition has made Malaysia a popular destination for healthcare tourists from neighbouring countries. Malaysia ranks among the best providers of healthcare in all of Southeast Asia. Patients find it a lot cheaper to get medical treatment in Malaysia.

More than one million healthcare tourists visited the country last year, with domestic hospital revenue standing at RM1.3 billion. This is expected to hit RM2.8 billion by 2020. Medical tourism has targeted travellers from China, Thailand, Indonesia, Myanmar, Vietnam and even from Middle Eastern countries. Private hospitals would naturally hire staff who can speak more than one language when they have patients coming from various countries to seek medical treatment. These hospitals have to equip themselves with employees who can speak foreign languages for their communicative and functional purposes. They have to be patient-friendly, and it’s an asset to employ staff who are able to speak a language that patients are comfortable with.

Even some government sectors require employees who are able to speak languages other than Malay. For operational purposes, the police and the military do employ those who can speak languages other than Malay. It would also be an asset for government staff dealing with international trade to possess a good command of foreign languages including Mandarin, as China, Singapore and Hong Kong are among the country’s top trading partners.

Depends on market forces

Politicians and dons should realise that the employability of a graduate in the private sector depends on market forces. One job skill that this sector looks for is, of course, language. Most sectors require employees to be able to communicate in a language understood by clients. Requiring any foreign language proficiency when applying for a job actually conforms to what certain jobs require, and it has nothing to do with the applicant’s race. There is nothing racially prejudicial, employment-wise, for companies requiring job applicants to have knowledge of Mandarin, English or any other specific language.

Teaching and learning in schools and colleges should instead facilitate the needs of the industry. The ministry should prepare graduates to be more employable by arming them with skill sets such as acquiring foreign languages to meet modern-day job requirements. Let graduates learn more languages to make them more competitive in the job market. Just accept the fact that some companies dealing with Chinese industries require job applicants to be proficient in Mandarin. Some others need graduates to be proficient in English and so forth. The non-Bumiputera matriculation quota and the requirement for Mandarin proficiency in some job applications should therefore be viewed separately.

Linking the matriculation quota system with unequal job opportunities for Bumiputeras in the private sector is not a wise comparison and, in fact, erroneous. Let’s not politicise and turn this into a racial issue.

Moaz Nair is an FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.

LONDON: Tens of thousands of North Korean women and girls – some as young as 9 – are being trafficked into sexual slavery in China as they try to flee poverty and oppression in their homeland, experts on the reclusive state said on Monday.

The sexual exploitation of North Koreans generates at least US$105 million in annual profits for the Chinese underworld, according to a report by the non-profit Korea Future Initiative, which includes harrowing accounts from trafficked women.

“Victims are prostituted for as little as 30 Chinese yuan (US$4.30), sold as wives for just 1,000 yuan, and trafficked into cybersex dens for exploitation by a global online audience,” the report’s author Yoon Hee-soon said.

“Many are sold more than once and are forced into at least one form of sexual slavery within a year of leaving their homeland.”

An estimated 60% of North Korean girls and women in China are trafficked into the sex trade, according to the report, launched at an event at Britain’s parliament.

Nearly half are pressed into prostitution, about a third sold into marriage and most others pushed into cybersex, researchers said.

No one at the Chinese embassy in London was immediately available for comment. Gathering information in North Korea is notoriously difficult.

Many North Koreans are enslaved in brothels in districts in northeast China with large migrant worker populations, the report said.

Trafficking survivors said prostitutes further south, in Shanghai, were branded with tattoos such as lions and butterflies to show ownership and deter abductions by rivals.

Interviewees told of women dying from sexually transmitted diseases and abuse.

Forced abortions

Girls and women enslaved in cybersex dens are usually aged between 12 and 29 but are sometimes younger, the report said.

They are forced to perform sex acts or sexually assaulted in front of webcams. A live-stream featuring a young girl can cost US$110, researchers said, adding that many subscribers appeared to be South Korean.

One woman, referred to as Ms Choi, told how she was taken to an apartment where she was shocked to see pre-pubescent girls.

“(There) was a bed in front of a table with a computer and webcam. Four men … gang raped me. When the third man began raping me (I) was bleeding … I cannot remember any more.”

The report said women forced into marriage were mostly sold in rural areas for 1,000 to 50,000 yuan, and were raped and abused by their husbands.

Estimates of the number of North Koreans in China vary between 50,000 and 200,000. China’s policy of detaining and repatriating North Koreans forces them to live in the shadows, placing them at high risk of exploitation, Yoon said.

Some are sold by policemen after arrest, while others are duped by traffickers offering to get them to countries where they can claim asylum, the report said. Abductions are also common.

Researchers said some trafficking networks stretched into North Korea where “sub-brokers” scour markets, villages and transport hubs for destitute-looking girls to fulfil orders from Chinese pimps and madams.

David Alton, co-chairman of Britain’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on North Korea, said the abuse uncovered by the two-year investigation was “horrific”.

He said the trafficking of North Korean women was tied to China’s one-child policy, which has distorted the country’s gender balance due to the preference for boys.

One trafficking survivor, who was repatriated three times before finally escaping to South Korea, told the launch event how pregnant women sent back to North Korea were forced to undergo abortions.

The woman said she was sent to a concentration camp where a doctor ripped her baby from her body – without anaesthetic – and tore him limb from limb.

The London-based Korea Future Initiative urged all states to help North Koreans in China escape and said embassies should accept asylum seekers as refugees.

KUALA LUMPUR May 21 — A motorcyclist died in a road accident involving six cars at Jalan Istana heading towards Sungai Besi, here last night.

In a statement issued tonight, Kuala Lumpur Fire Brigade Operations Centre said the department received a report of the incident at 8.47pm and a team from the Hang Tuah and Pudu Fire and Rescue Department led by Senior Fire Officer II Mazuri Mat Zain rushed to the scene.

“A man, 52, who was riding a motorcycle was confirmed dead at the location while several drivers and passengers suffered slight injuries.

“The body of the victim has been handed over to the police while the injured received treatment from the Emergency Medical Rescue Service Unit at the location,” the statement said. — Bernama

BESUT, May 21 — A 13-year-old boy lost all five fingers on his right hand while playing with firecrackers in Kampung Kubang Ikan here yesterday.

Besut district police chief Mohd Zamri Mohd Rowi said Syafiq Haikal Shaharrudin was playing with the firecrackers at about 5.30pm when they exploded in his hand, seriously injuring his right wrist and destroying his fingers.

“His mother, Zainab Mohd, 40, heard an explosion and screams coming from outside her house before her cousin came and informed her of the accident which befell her son,” he told Bernama when contacted last night.

Zainab then sent him to the Besut Hospital for treatment.

Mohd Zamri said this is the first mishap in the district involving firecrackers this Ramadan. — Bernama