met groups of marginalized people

remember i mentioned about attending a leaders training session last weekend? it was an interesting 2-days session. the most interesting part was the exposure trip we made to a housing estate in sg. siput. we met some marginalized people through the contact of dr jeyakumar devaraj, an activist and PSM member. (some of you might remember dr deyakumar running against samy velu in the 1999 election). we were divided into groups to interview the orang asli, retrenched workers, the single mothers, the squatters, the foreign workers and vegetable farmer.

I was in the retrenched workers group and what i heard was really very interesting and eye opening indeed. they were from the kamiri housing estate in sg siput, perak, owned by their boss, guthrie, a large plantation company. they told us many things like how their rights were denied by their employer and how some ‘MIC gangsters’ (their own words!) intimidated them. still they were persistent and keep on fighting for their rights. yes indeed, i’m glad i had the first hand opportunity to listen to their plights, right from their own mouth.

what they had told us anyway, were more or less same as what dr. jeyakumar had wrote in aliran in 2003, but of course we get to hear more personal sharing.

i am now in the process of writing an article to our catholic paper, the herald, on this training session, together with the reports of the interviews of those marginalised people. it will be an interesting eye-opener read to find out how these people were neglected and denied their rights, and how they stand up for their rights. when the article is completed and published, i will then post it up here.