Some toil, some spoil
What’s a few thousand here and there that the company won’t even notice considering the mind boggling profits it rakes in every year anyway?
Emma Black, Free Malaysia Today
How often have you found yourself trailing impatiently behind a lumbering taxi on the very day you are horribly late for an appointment?
How often have you, in a fit of anger, found a break in traffic to finally overtake your tormentor, whipping around in your driver’s seat to give him a cold, hard stare that packs a punch, only to find a painfully old, grey-haired senior citizen, hunched over the wheel as he struggles to see the path ahead of him.
I remember an old, hobbling tea lady at my workplace years ago, pushing a trolley laden with cups, pots of hot tea and hot coffee to our cubicles every morning and afternoon like clockwork. She was someone’s grandmother – she talked about her “cucu” often enough – and it was sad beyond words that she still had to work day in, day out to put food on the table even as she battled with diabetes. When she died of the disease, the sadness was overwhelming.
My sister’s part-time maid, bed-ridden for a month by a painful stitch in her side, diagnosed as sciatica, showed-up at her gate one day, ready to work. Brushing aside my sister’s concerns for her health, she said bluntly: “I need the money.” Caring for her granddaughter, and saddled with an unemployed adult son, her instinct for survival forced her out of bed every morning in search of a decent income.
The reality that times are so hard that senior citizens have to keep working to support their families is hard to take in. These old men and women, should be watching their favourite drama on telly or having friends over for tea or reading a good book as their grandchildren play at their feet, not putting in long hours behind the wheel, pushing trolleys or mopping floors so bills can be paid, debts reduced.
The Goods and Services Tax does them no favours. Nor the slump in oil and gas prices. Or the end to precious subsidies on everyday items.
Yet this generation of hardworking Malaysians deserve a salute for their resoluteness. No easy way out for this bunch – many will continue to work till the very day they drop dead – like that diabetic tea-lady.
Not so for the more “adventurous” few who find creative ways to supplement their incomes.
