Current Affairs

Recently, the Human Resources Ministry announced that after a series of bilateral talks with Indonesia, the moratorium on the despatch of domestic maids to Malaysia was officially lifted on December 1st. However the first batch of maids are only expected to arrive in March 2012, as the new rules require 15 stages of preparation, which includes a mandatory 200-hour training.

Jeffery Foo, the acting president of the Malaysian Association of Foreign Maid Agencies (PAPA) explains the changes to the recruitment process for Indonesian maids being sent to Malaysia and why he thinks there needs to be a "new breed of employers".

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Illegal logging has cost Malaysia some 800 to 900 million ringgit a year, according to watchdog Transparency International. In the following interview, Surin Suksuwan, chief technical officer for WWF in Peninsular Malaysia, explains why forest clearing is the bigger problem, why enforcement is lax, and why information is power when it comes to forest conservation. 

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Shamsinah Che Shariff, president of the Association of Registered Child Care Providers Malaysia discuss why so many child care centres remain unregistered in the country, and the implications on the children it looks after. She also talks about the weak enforcement towards unregistered centres, as well as the recent case of the mysterious deaths of the two infants, just minutes apart from each other. 

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Former UMNO Supreme Council Member Tan Sri Kadir Sheikh Fadzir has claimed that UMNO members have been using cash handouts to win over voters during elections.

He says that he himself had been offered money to use as cash handouts in the past, and that the "bomb" tactic of vote-buying usually takes place few days before elections, not just in Peninsular Malaysia but "especially in Sabah and Sarawak".

"Yes, you know I've been on record saying that they used to. I used to be leading delegations from Kedah, to go and campaign for various by-elections and so on. And you know, as leader, they gave me lumps of money. Cash. To distribute. I said, oh please, don't give that to me. Go and give it to others to do it; I don't want to do it," he tells BFM in a recent interview.

The ex-minister, who is also currently deputy president of NGO Amanah, says he is choosing to reveal this information now, in line with the Prime Minister’s call for electoral reform.

"It’s Datuk Seri Najib himself, who has, in a way, strongly implied that there's definitely a lot of shortcomings in our electoral system. That's why he appointed this Parliamentary Select Committee for Electoral Reform, and he has even invited the Opposition parties to sit in it. In other words, he really wants a change. So I'm using this opportunity, you know, to help him to ensure that we can really change what we should not have done before... So I'm doing a great, great deed for my party," he says.

In the following interview, Tan Sri Kadir explains how "bomb" tactic works, the honourable "old school" politics of UMNO's founding fathers as well as why he never spoke out during his tenure as UMNO Supreme Council member. 

In Part 2 of the interview, we get UMNO Secretary-General Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor to respond to the allegations. Click here for the interview podcast.

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Mission schools have been educating generations of Malaysians since the 1800s, producing prolific alumni such as the Sultan of Selangor Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak and Bank Negara Governor Tan Sri Dato Sri Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz.

The purpose of mission schools was to give a holistic education to young Malaysians to prepare them in life and to contribute to society as well as nationbuilding, says Brother Anthony Rodgers, director of the La Salle Brothers in Malaysia. A former student, teacher and principal of a mission school, Brother Anthony believes that what made mission schools special, was that they focused not just on academic excellence, but more importantly, the human and spiritual development of the students.

In the following interview, Brother Anthony also sheds light on the different eras of education in Malaysian history, how the schools have evolved as well as the initiatives of the La Salle schools today in developing a student's potential -- even poor academic performers.

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Recently the MACC announced its proposal that all Cabinet ministers, deputy ministers and their immediate family members declare their assets to the agency, after Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng and his state exco's declared their assets. Datuk Paul Low, president of Transparency International Malaysia, shares his thoughts on why elected and public officials should publicly declare assets.

Datuk Paul talks about what assets and liabilities should be disclosed, and dispells the myth that disclosure could endanger cabinet miniters and their families. He also points out that the move is more about prevention -- serving as a deterrent as the person knows he’s being watched.

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Rita Sim, non executive director of Media Chinese Internationa, co-founder of Cense, and author of the book "Unmistakably Chinese, Genuinely Malaysian" talks about the Malaysian Chinese identity, why Chinese school education is probably here to stay despite its limitations, and the issue of emigration. This is the final part of our series "Pendatang, Loyal Citizen". 

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Emeritus Professor Tan Sri Khoo Kay Kim, the historian, talks about how the Chinese accumulated wealth and power in the 19th century, from Yap Ah Loy, the kapitan of Kuala Lumpur and head of secret societies, to acquiring tin mines from the Malays and making a killing, and how the Chinese eventually lost their power base in Kuala Lumpur. This is second part of the series "Pendatang, Loyal Citizen". 

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The loss of autonomy of mission schools has affected the performance and ethos of the schools in the country, says Yin Kam Yoke, honorary secretary of the Malayan Christian Schools Council.  "The mission schools began losing their autonomy with the implementation of the Aziz Report in 1971 when 99% of all teachers in service opted to be in government servants to enjoy medical, housing and pension benefits," she says, adding that she was one of the many who opted to be pensionable.

When the Aziz Report was implemented, the right of hiring and firing teachers was taken away from the mission schools' board of governors. "And thus began the slow erosion of autonomy of school boards," she says. Since then, teachers posted to mission schools came at the directive of the education departments and the Ministry of Education. 

Commenting on the Convent Bukit Nanas issue --  which involved the Education Ministry's non-adherence of the principle of maximum consultation with the school's board of governors -- Yin says that more often than not, the promise to consult mission bodies in the appointment of heads to mission schools "has been honoured in the breach rather than the observance".  The right principal, she says, is crucial in upholding the ethos and vision of mission schools.

In the second and final interview of our Mission School Series, Yin discusses the challenge of finding excellent teachers, the problem of Islamisation in mission schools as well as why Malaysia should follow the Hong Kong mission schools model to replicate its success. 

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