I refer to your recent reports on building woes with the forced exodus of illegal migrant workers. It is the best example of government corruption and pillage I have ever seen. The building contractors of this country, many of them cronies of the government, have raped this great land with over-development using cheap and illegal labour. While these hypocrites decried the slavery of olden times, they practised it with vigor.

They generated a culture of fearful people who were so hungry for employment that they would sell their souls for any job and then have the audacity to bribe the authorities to overlook the illegals' presence in the country. When these unfortunate people could not get work or when some were embolden by the sight of riches in the hands of others, they turned to crime the authorities simply could not handle.

(Name me a crime the local police can prevent unless "the car was acting suspiciously", there is a gun involved, et cetera. They have no means to handle petty crime such as snatch theft, house break-ins — they cannot even catch people whom they have issued summonsed to — for example in the recent Ops Warta — nor can they catch people with fake driving licenses).

My neighbors have been plagued by violence from illegal aliens working on housing projects in the area for five years. Two neighbors were kidnapped from their own homes, then terrorised and robbed. One has since abandoned his home and moved away.

My other neighbor has endured seven attempted burglaries and is selling his house.

My home has a sensitive alarm system and we sleep lightly just in case. I have had to work out a complicated extraction plan should we be "attacked". I may as well be in Afghanistan, at least I could have an automatic weapon and be able to shoot first, ask later who is in my house. Claymores on my perimeter are the next barrier I have in mind. God help me if I ever need to call the police for help. They don't even have a good map of the area because the local council has not "accepted" the roads of this more than six-year-old development.

The building contractors of this nation had a good chance to develop skilled construction labour using the journeyman system of a labour union. In their greed, they have squandered the chance and become addicted to low-cost, slave-like labour, to no real benefit of the country (except possibly the stock market players). The authorities and their crony mentality have a hand in all these sad state of affairs

The country's beautiful hills and greens are now gone forever, replaced with some of the most tacky houses and buildings I have ever seen. The property market is overbuilt, many dwellings left empty for years after receiving the certificate of fitness. And this government continues to open land to developers and persuade the banks to allow home loans for as little as five percent down.

I even met a man who owned five houses in five different developments and he said it was so easy to buy a house, he could not stop himself. Every man and woman is a land baron or baroness to a desert of empty buildings with easy bank payments. Such rubbish.

Malaysia boleh? Think again. I look forward to more in-depth reports on this issue. Good luck and keep up the good work. Malaysikini is the only publication fit for distribution, but you have to read the other government owned garbage to really understand why.