Enlightening Tengku Adnan on soup kitchens
Izzati Rahman, The Malaysian Insider
I am not a veteran volunteer, but I have had a fair share of experience volunteering at various soup kitchens across Kuala Lumpur since I was 16. This is my humble opinion and is not linked to any organisations that I have volunteered with.
From cutting onions to packing food to distributing food in the soup kitchen, we have never been paid. Most soup kitchens receive donation in food and money various sponsors, be it an individual, company or food operator.
Each soup kitchen has their location of distribution (sometimes three of four a night), and it is almost at the same spot every time they are on duty. Faces change among volunteers, some regular, some not. Same goes to those who come for food, some are regulars, some are not.
You see, not all of the people who come to soup kitchens are homeless. Some of them are, but a big number of them are people suffering from poverty.
Extremely small income earners who cannot afford to feed their family, single mothers who work double shift on minimum wage and is unable to provide food for their children, and also old people who are not being cared after. People who have so little to live on, but with many mouths to feed. Those are the people who line up day after day.
Do we feed the homeless, the drug users and sex workers? Yes we do. The raunchy looking guy with bloodshot red eyes? Yes we do. The man who smells like booze hardly able to stand straight while queueing? Yes we do. The man who pushes a stolen trolly from Giant with all his things inside? Yes we do. We do not discriminate, we feed because they are hungry and because getting food is a problem for them.
Now, Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan says, “We give them jobs but they don’t want as it is easy to get food as these street kitchens are feeding them”.
Putrajaya created a plan to give jobs to the jobless, and not specifically jobs for the homeless. Half of the homeless people do not even have proper identification as they are born out of prostitution, poverty, or are mentally unstable and unfit to find an occupation.
Now Datuk Seri, I am pretty sure you have never gone down to the streets to volunteer, so let me give you a little introduction.
Soup kitchens in Malaysia are not a walk-in-for-free KFC where it is open 24 hours for you to come in anytime you like, place your order and walk away with hot delicious food. Most soup kitchens only operate at night because volunteers have a day job. Then there’s the weather, and the queue to take food, and trust me, Datuk Seri, it is not the gourmet food you are fed with your entire life.
It’s basic food, just to beat the hunger. So those who come for food, can only come once a day, walk to the area of distribution, bear with the weather and queue just to get basic food. Easy? No Datuk Seri, it’s not.
By your logic, we should ban free food for buka puasa at mosques, because free food breeds homelessness. We should ban Langar meals at Gudhwaras and temples giving free vegetarian lunch, because we will breed homelessness. We should probably ban ministers’ lavish open houses during festive seasons (which are paid by us, the rakyat, by the way), because that too will breed homelessness. Go ahead, ban them.
