opinion

The Group of Concerned Citizens (GCC), a network community of responsible individuals, held a press conference on Saturday to remind the government about the Petaling Jaya Selatan incident and the unsolved problem of its victims.

As it is all too obvious, the media picks up and sets the narrative of national attention. Today, other issues have hogged media space and time so much that the Petaling Jaya Selatan incident and the problems of the victims are slipping into oblivion.

The attempt by GCC to present a '100 days Report Card' certainly aims to bring Petaling Jaya Selatan back to national attention. And with that, the issue of justice for, what Charles Santiago, one of the coordinators of GCC referred to, victims of a double tragedy - of race-based attack and of official amnesia and neglect.

Justice for the victims still needs to be addressed. One, the perpetrators of the ghastly acts of violence must eventually be brought to task and justice must be seen to be done. Two, housing for the poor victims must be actively resolved along with a careful, sensitive strategy of building cross-community relationships.

But justice immediately needs another set of activity - rehabilitation.

Compassionate governance

Among the issues that were raised, rehabilitation seemed very critical. Importantly, the concern was about a particular species of rehabilitation i.e. one that concerns 'victims', particularly the poor, caught in tragic events not of their making and over which they have little or no control, like a collapse of public building or a race-based riot.

People - particularly the poor - caught in such situations either die leaving dependents in serious problems or are maimed and require help to re-adjust their lives so that they can again lead a normal life.

Rehabilitation involves the process of restoring an individual - here, the victim - to a useful and constructive place in society, especially through some form of financial help, educational or special job opportunity or vocational training.

Having a proper, well-thought out rehabilitation policy is the business of any democratically elected government and is certainly an indication of good, sustainable and compassionate governance.

Casual nature

The idea and practice of creative rehabilitation is critical for the survival of any society, and more so for a society that claims to be a warm, caring society. A caring society without an active policy on rehabilitation of its citizens who become victims of tragic events is really a contradiction in terms.

It is certainly a form of inhumanity. And, in the heart of that inhumanity is injustice. Citizens, whoever they are, need to know that they have the support of their government in times when they face their worst difficulties as a result social or natural calamities.

There is no room here for the interference of either affirmative action policy or ethnic politics. People need help and they should receive it.

A careful examination of the victims of Petaling Jaya Selatan reveals the casual nature of official concerns for casualties that threatens a decent, long term, livelihood. All the victims of the incident are poor Malaysians.

Those who died in the incident have left behind dependents - wives, very young children, elderly parents and young siblings. Those who survived have lost proper use of their hands or fingers or have lost, because of their head injuries, bodily control over stable navigation.

There is a person who lost his thumb, a major evolutionary development to give us that power to hold and manipulate. Poor people hardly work in the advanced knowledge sectors. Their work involves a heavy use of their hand and navigational abilities.

Poor get poorer

As Nagarajan, another co-ordinator of GCC explained, the Petaling Jaya Selatan incident has left a number of healthy Malaysians physically maimed so that they cannot do what they have been doing to earn a living or lead a normal life.

They are now faced with what we all talk about casually - the poor get poorer. Of course, these people received some official attention. But a careful examination of this attention for the victims does not seem to reflect any indication that officialdom and the system it manages are alive to the condition of the dependents of the dead ones or those who have been maimed in the incident.

It certainly does not reflect a serious concern for long-term and creative rehabilitation of the victims. It instead reflects an insensitive, procedural allocative mechanism that treats victims as statistics.

It reflects a one time, piecemeal mechanical approach to victims extracted out of their social context and is blind to negative social consequences of their physical conditions.

The GCC is trying it best to meet the immediate needs of the victims - payment of medical bills, an additional expenditure that has come to take away whatever little money they have, payment of house rents, sundry expenditure needs, etc.

This it has been able to do by getting concerned individuals to help and also by attempting to build bridges between philanthropic institutions and the victims. But these are certainly limited in scope and extent.

Real people

Rehabilitation for victims of the Petaling Jaya Selatan incident must eventually be a creative government effort.

It is high time that the government comes alive to the fact that among its citizens there is a mother who has lost her son and finds it extremely difficult to lead a decent life without support, a widow with two children and a mother-in-law to look after and the young boy who has lost the opportunity and hard-earned funds to sit for an examination.

These are real people with real problems created by a situation that they had no control over. In their faces, we see anxiety and questions. One questions is written large: What am I going to do now?

Is it not time for the government to move away from the blindness created by cold statistics in order to listen to the woes of its citizens and consider rehabilitation more seriously? More sincerely?

DR M NADARAJAH teaches sociology and organisation theory at Stamford College and is involved in activities related to sustainable development and urbanisation.