Sunday, January 27, 2008
I Don't Speak ENGLISH...
"I don't speak English or Wait..." This will be the answer from the foreign workers in Malaysia right now. You don't expect them to understand you or even listening to you. Yeah, they don't understand or speak English, Chinese and Malay, so stop bothering talking to them. I have nothing against foreign workers like them in service line but take a minute and think about all this. Firstly, more than 10 years ago, we had Indonesians coming here to work, it took us a while to get used to it. But now, we have Thais, Vietnamese, Burmese, Myanmar"ese", Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Indians from India, Chinese from China and others that I left out. For god sake, do we need so many of them? We used to have aunties who work for restaurants. Now, they were gone. Cheap laborers made them lose their job. Jobless rate went up. Factories also looking for foreign laborers, hundreds or maybe thousands lose their job. Petrol stations workers are foreign workers, locals lose their jobs. Well, this ain't so smart after all. Seriously, why is the government gave out so many permits to this people? Are this jobs not wanted by locals? Last year we had Visit Malaysia Year. Tourists came and will have their best story of their life. Malaysians here can't speak English, but wait... its actually not Malaysians, but foreign workers. But do they know about it? No. Wait for the time where despatches or office boys will be foreign workers and crime rate will goes up dramatically. I don't blame the foreign workers as they have to pay hefty sum to come here and work their asses out to pay back. However, little did they know, they are taking the grains from our little small rice pot. Sorry, " I don't speak English"...
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4 comments:
It's not easy for the foreign workers here either actually, they have to live their own countries and families to earn a meagre sum that is alot compared to what they'll earn in their own country. I understand you attribute rising crime rates with the incresasing number of foreign workers, "the Inspector General of Police had reported (NST, 17 Feb 2007) that foreign workers were accountable for about 2 per cent of crime cases in 2006."-http://www.aliran.com/content/view/272/10/ , http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/IC03Ae02.html
It's understandable if they don't speak English, it's not their mother tongue and they're not well educated. Tourists come and go thinking we can't speak English? Believe me, there are plenty of locals who can't speak English well themselves, and the people the tourists encounter are foreign workers, because, well, see below. In fact, if I was to rate my level of English, I would say it's just passable. I think I would be fairly pissed if the foreign worker who took my orders pretended to understand English/BM and then comes back with something other than what I ordered. Alright, maybe they are the main reason alot of our graduates are unemployed, but we are partly to blame. Alot of us are choosy, we like cushy jobs with plenty of benefits, and we find menial tasks deragatory. Foreigners don't mind as long as they get paid , and they are known to be exploited by their own employees and paid very little. Sometimes we see only foreigners manning the food stall or shop, well, their employers left them to it while they went off and enjoyed themselves. So we're to blame for what tourists think of us.
To tell you the truth, most of the foreigners I met in shops and what nots actually try to understand what I'm saying. I realize that maybe I've gone too far, but sometimes I feel that us locals discriminate foreigners unjustly. And I'm sorry if I have hurt your feelings in any way, please forgive me.
I am not saying you are wrong and that I am right, I'm just stating my opinion, if anything I'm waiting for someone to lay the smack down on me with a well written argument to counter mine (provided my post gets approved), and it's possible I'm taking this too seriously. Well, I probably am :)
hey, I realize how irrelevant my replies are to this post, so I hope you won't publish it, thanks and deepest apologies.
I wouldn't say your comments are irrelevant but its your honest comments. I felt them are just people who just wants to "cari makan". Same goes to Malaysians migrating to places like Australia and New Zealand. We are seen like them but just educated ones. I love this country as much as I could but things are not in place as it used to be.
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