To say that Federal Territories Minister Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor has been taking a beating since the announcement of his proposed policy for dealing with Kuala Lumpur’s homeless and the people and organizations helping them would be an understatement.
Netizens have been up in arms about his plan on Wednesday to fine not only vagrants in the city, but also people who give them money in the streets. Even more were outraged after yesterday’s news that NGOs operating food kitchens to feed the capital’s hardcore poor would be restricted from setting up operations within a 2km radius from the city’s Bukit Bintang shopping and commercial hub, or face a fine.
Tengku Adnan took to his official Facebook page to help clarify the issue and to lower the heat on himself … but managed to only double down on his earlier statements, couched in his defence that his main objective is to keep KL clean and preserve its reputation as a model city.
He acknowlegdes both the efforts of NGOs currently trying to feed the city’s hardcore poor and the anger of netizens at his proposals, and says he is now open to suggestions and could even possibly make amendments to his plan.
However, he followed up that Facebook post with a KiniTV video restating his reasons for the plan’s harsh measures – the video quotes him saying vagrants in KL are “mostly foreigners” – although we’re not sure how nationality modifies the effects of urban vagrancy – and that most of his detractors are opposition party supporters. The main thrust of his statement in the video is that people shouldn’t be giving to beggars in the street, when they have religious and charity organisations to channel their alms for them. (He helpfully notes that Muslims, Buddhists, Christians and Hindus in Malaysia all have religious charity organisations that would gladly take their money for this purpose.) The video ends with him revealing a syndicate of beggars who are actually Chinese nationals living comfortably off their ill-gotten gains in the Federal Hotel. Okay.
The latest move he’s taken on Facebook is to link to his Ministry’s official mini-manifesto on the vagrancy issue, again recapping all he’s said on the issue over the past few days and defending its merits.
The main objective of his plan is to set up a “homeless-free zone” in downtown KL, not to eradicate homelessness. This goes a long way to explain his brusque handling of soup kitchens operating in the city; it’s not that helping the poor is bad, but doing it in the Golden Triangle is bad … for business? As a concession to the “homeless problem”, the Federal Territories Ministry proposes a “one-stop homeless shelter” for the city’s many vagrants and hardcore poor, where federal agencies and NGOs alike can converge to set up their soup kitchens and give free food to the needy, many of whom will have to move themselves from wherever they originally were to the one place in KL that is legally sanctioned to contain homeless people.
Perhaps this is why there is a disconnect between the Federal Territories Minister and the people so angry about his plans. While people are concerned about the problems faced by Kuala Lumpur’s homeless, Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor sees the homeless as a problem Kuala Lumpur currently has. There’s a pretty big difference.
