8 July 2021 01:48 am Views - 350
Photo AFP
They said everyone had some kind of ‘paper’ which allowed them to move
People are living in a self-imposed lockdown. The dread is almost palpable
My world view is that what people do with their money is their business
People who equate drug addiction with beggary should see Martin Scorsese’s movie The Wolf of Wall Street starring Leonardo Dicaprio. In any case, not every beggar is a drug addict. Many are hungry old people, and it’s sad to see them
Of course, such beggary is a nuisance. Poverty is a nuisance too
But anyone who thinks eating out in Colombo is cheap should try it out at one of the Malls or posh restaurants
I asked the policemen guarding entry to my street while so many people were moving about on foot, motorcycles or three wheelers. They said everyone had some kind of ‘paper’ which allowed them to move. They didn’t elaborate. But this mysterious human traffic only served to underline the ghastly nature of the problem that we are forced to live with.
Though freedom of movement has been restored since Monday, the city looks dead by eight p.m. It looks more like Kandy. Many shops remained closed. By Wednesday, however, things looked better, with more pedestrians, more buses running, though shops were shuttered up and streets largely emptied past eight p.m. People are living in a self-imposed lockdown. The dread is almost palpable.
There is a bakery at the junction open till 10 p.m. And I have been feeding the four cats that wait outside for handouts. There is a newcomer – a woman with a plastered leg, leaning on a crutch. She doesn’t look like a regular beggar. She tells me that she was attacked by a bull, hence the broken leg. I’m reminded of the proverbial ‘gahen wetuna minihata gona anna wage’ story – the man who fell from a tree, only to be rammed by a bull. Her husband, a three wheeler driver, has no work, and they have three children to feed.
She also tells me not to give money to those ubiquitous beggars at the street lights because they are drug addicts. I know some of them are drug addicts. After the previous government magnanimously widened my street and linked it to the drug infested neighbourhood of Wanathamulla, many of them pass my house several times a day to get their shots. The dogs bark at them, and some of them throw stones at my gate.
My world view is that what people do with their money is their business. People who equate drug addiction with beggary should see Martin Scorsese’s movie The Wolf of Wall Street starring Leonardo Dicaprio. In any case, not every beggar is a drug addict. Many are hungry old people, and it’s sad to see them, scurrying between vehicles as the light turns red, then sitting on the pavement out of sheer exhaustion. Anyone who thinks people get rich doing this should spend half an hour at a traffic light observing how many roll down their windows to give a pleading man or woman some money.
Of course, such beggary is a nuisance. Poverty is a nuisance too, especially to those suffering from it. But it’s those who hold power that find it most embarrassing. Usually, the neatest answer is to root out beggars and the poor from cities, followed by stray dogs. This is pure neoliberalism (in this country, even the socialists have done it). Is it any wonder that the most ruthless neoliberals were either socialists or communists to begin with?
Yesterday evening, I got a call from a friend living in the UK. He’s a computer programmer and was doing well there until he lost his job during the first wave. Like others unemployed, he got social security, but he says it’s not enough to maintain the family though food is cheaper in London than here (for home cooking, not eating out. But anyone who thinks eating out in Colombo is cheap should try it out at one of the Malls or posh restaurants. Of course, my view is based on second hand sources. When I go eating out, it’s in places keeping with my station in life, and I haven’t had the pleasure (except vegetarian food) in two years.
My friend is now back to work with a startup company, but he says things are difficult for most people and food is being collected and distributed to the needy – which means the unemployed (especially single parents, not just the homeless). Of course, this is a British idea, a Western idea, and why should we take it up – for as long as I can remember, our rulers have been exhorting us to be self-reliant and be suspicious of ideas coming from the West. It’s hard to imagine, for example, any food left over from the parliament’s food chain that may be distributed to the needy. It’s eaten scrupulously to the last grain of rice, and there is nothing left over to feed the hungry.
But it’s depressing to keep going on about the ravages of Covid -19. The world has problems older than the pandemic, and happily there are people trying their best to solve them. Domestic slavery is one such problem.
The UK has a major domestic slavery issue, and the principal victims are Filipino or Indonesian. There are at least 53 million domestic workers in the world, and the vast majority of them face some degree of abuse at the hands of their employers. They are forced to seek employment in Europe or the Middle East because of grinding poverty at home. In the Philippines, nearly 17 per cent of the population are poverty-stricken. In 2020, official remittances sent by Filipinos working abroad amounted to $33.2 billion, or almost ten per cent of the country’s GDP. According to the UN’s International Labour Organisation, domestic workers are among those most vulnerable to abuse, trafficking and exploitation.
In the case of Filipinos, the FDWA (Filipino Domestic Workers Association) actively helps the worst cases. Operating from a small church in London, they respond to appeals for help on Face Book by desperate domestic workers, helping them to escape.
In one instance, a woman called Guevarra was brought to London by her employees from Qatar, and forced to work from 5a.m. till 1 a.m. every day, sleeping just three or four hours. She slept on the nursery floor, constantly disturbed by the children, and had to go hungry, scavenging and stealing food whenever possible. She was also denied her full wages, paid 680 pounds in two months for working 18-20 hour days, seven days a week.
She was not allowed to leave the house except with a family member and forbidden to talk to any outsiders. She was scared to go the police because, in Qatar, domestic workers face jail if they leave their employers without permission. She didn’t know that UK laws were different. She finally managed to escape with the help of a Libyan couple.
Many Lankan women working in the Middle East face similar issues. The difference is that we don’t have the equivalent of a FDWA to help them.