Category: Sosial

Maids Should Be Protected Under The Employment Act

We thank Mr Leonard Poh for his feedback in “To promote domestic workers’ welfare, share anecdotes, best practices” (March 13).

Our study was conducted based on a sample of respondents stratified to reflect the major populations of migrant domestic workers here as indicated by published numbers. Statistical differences were tested using parametric and non-parametric techniques.

Statistical relationships were also examined with correlation and regression analyses. From our calculations, we concluded that 670 respondents were sufficient to achieve statistical significance in our results.

HOME acknowledges that in the 10 years we have been campaigning for migrant domestic workers, there have been improvements in their welfare and rights. Still, we have a long way to go in ensuring equal rights and adequate protections for them.

For example, our respondents worked an average of 13 hours a day, with 10 per cent found to sleep in the kitchen, living room or bomb shelter. More than half did not even have a copy of their contracts on them.

Positive mental health can happen only when employers respect their employees’ privacy and give them regular time off and rest days. However, domestic workers should not have to depend on the goodwill of employers to enjoy basic rights.

The Manpower Ministry should include them in the Employment Act so benefits such as sick leave, public holidays and limits on working hours are not left to employers to decide.

If employees in other occupations will not accept the denial of such rights, why should domestic workers be discriminated against in this way?

Jolovan Wham, Executive Director, Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics

Source: www.todayonline.com

March 19, 2015
Probation Sentence Overturned, Voyeur Going To Jail

A man who was initially given probation for various offences, including filming family members of his girlfriend in the shower, making an up-skirt video, and possessing 10,574 obscene films, will be heading to jail after all.

In his ruling on Tuesday (Mar 17), Justice Chan Seng Onn described the initial sentence as “manifestly inadequate” and ordered that Chong Hou En be jailed for 16 weeks.

The prosecution had appealed against Chong’s sentence of 30 months’ split probation.

The 29-year-old had been convicted of five counts of insulting the modesty of a woman by intruding on her privacy. Back in 2011, he was caught red-handed by a victim’s husband, filming an up-skirt video at IMM shopping mall in Jurong. The former labour relations officer had stuck a mini-camera to the tip of his shoe for this purpose.

Following his arrest for that up-skirt video, subsequent investigations uncovered thousands of obscene videos in his computer.

It was also found that Chong installed a camera disguised as a lighter in the toilet of his girlfriend’s parents’ home from August 2010. Thereafter, he filmed her older sister, his girlfriend’s two nieces, aged 10 and 12 at the time, and his girlfriend’s sister-in-law.

Justice Chan noted that in sentencing Chong to probation, the district judge had placed considerable weight on medical evidence that Chong was suffering from the psychiatric condition of voyeurism.

However, in his judgement, Justice Chan took into account aggravating factors such as the high degree of planning and premeditation in Chong’s acts, and the fact that there were multiple victims – two of them very young.

Source: www.channelnewsasia.com

March 18, 2015
Grouses Emerge On Temporary Yishun Bus Interchange

Despite the many hours spent engaging residents and other stakeholders on the temporary Yishun bus interchange, grouses among commuters have arisen days after the SMRT-run interchange began operations.

In particular, the location of the temporary facility and its larger size came in for criticism.

The old Yishun bus interchange was situated opposite Yishun MRT station and beside Northpoint Shopping Centre, and all three places were connected by an underground links. The new facility, which opened on Saturday (March 14) is positioned opposite Northpoint Shopping Centre, and commuters must now cross an extra road to get from the MRT station to the interchange.

The temporary interchange is meant to serve residents until the new Yishun Integrated Transport Hub is ready in 2019. The hub will feature an air-conditioned bus interchange with an underpass link to Yishun MRT station and it will also be connected to the upcoming Northpoint City development.

In a Facebook post on Mar 14, SMRT said before the move, it invested “many hours” engaging Yishun residents, schools in the area, the Ministry of Transport and the Land Transport Authority, noting “such relocations can make the headlines for the wrong reasons”. It conducted trials with wheelchair users and engaged commuters to serve as service ambassadors in the first few days of operations.

Commuter Fatimah Jaafar, 62, found the distance between the new interchange and the MRT station a strain on her body. “I have to walk from the MRT station all the way to the interchange every day from Monday to Saturday. Not good for an old woman like me,” said Ms Fatimah, who has had a kidney transplant.

Some commuters were also unhappy that the new interchange, at 27,000 square metres, is bigger than the old 20,000-square metre interchange. “Just walking from one end to the other is very tiring,” said student Dwight Adriel, 14.

Other minor complaints include the misuse of the priority queues, the occasional traffic jams that occur at the entrance of the interchange, and confusion over the amended routes of a certain number of buses.

However, some commuters agreed that it is too soon to judge the new interchange. Visiting the new interchange for the first time on Monday, Mr Zulkifli Ariffin, 34, said: “It just opened a few days ago. Give it maybe one or two months and we can then see whether it is good or not. Right now, I think the interchange is not that bad for a temporary one.”

Source: www.channelnewsasia.com

March 17, 2015
Woman Still Pained By Death Of 4 Year Old Son

Almost a year has passed since her four-year-old son’s death but time has done little to ease her pain.

Madam Rosnani Ismail, 35, still has his clothes, despite being advised by friends to give them away, because they are all that she has to remind her of him.

Muhammad Irfan Salam, who had epilepsy, died while under his father’s care in his rented flat at Toa Payoh on April 7 last year.

A Coroner’s Inquiry into his death returned an open verdict on Friday because it could not be determined how Nitrazepam, a drug used to relieve severe anxiety and insomnia, had got into Irfan’s system when it had not been prescribed to him.

Madam Rosnani said that when she saw her son’s body, she shouted at her husband: “You did this to him!”

She added: “I will never forgive him for what he has done.”

Source: www.tnp.sg

March 16, 2015
Nestle Malaysia: Beware of Fake Milo

KUALA LUMPUR: Two days after government officials found imitation packs of Milo on sale in Negeri Sembilan, the manufacturers, Nestle Malaysia, began a campaign to warn its customers.

The company posted a warning on its Facebook page with photographs to show customers how to tell counterfeit products, based on the perforations on the plastic packs of the chocolate malted powdered beverage, media reports said.

Utusan Malaysia had reported today that the domestic trade ministry had seized RM250,000 worth of imitation Milo packs in Mantin, Negeri Sembilan on Friday.

The state enforcement officer Saifulbahri Abdul Kadir said 1,000 empty boxes, 50,000 empty plastic packs, a printer, a weighing machine and a numbering printer had been seized and the fake Milo was ready to be distributed around the state. The ministry would take court action under the Trade Descriptions Act, he said.

Six immigrant workers from Myanmar and Indonesia were arrested in the raid.

Nestle has claimed that Malaysians are the biggest drinkers of Milo in the world.

Source: www.freemalaysiatoday.com

March 16, 2015