Of course, I find the response (or excuse) from YB Ng Yen Yen to be very shallow and irrational. Could it be that many foreigners are repelled more by the corruption in the country, especially that which affects the efficiency of the police and government agencies? Street demonstrations are a common practice and norm in the West – we don’t see a massive exodus of Westerners because of that, do we?
Therefore, the government needs to study why so many foreigners prefer to choose Singapore (a country which has high cost of living) as their second home or as country where they want to apply PR status. Why won’t they choose Malaysia where we have lower cost of living? Why does M’sia lose out to S’pore in terms of tourists and a place as second home?
I am surprised there are so few foreigners applying as MM2H participants following its implementation since 2002. This shows that the perception of the global community towards M’sia is pretty low. And this perception certainly cannot be contributed to peaceful protests of the rakyat alone. (Furthermore, don’t forget, the protests usually turn sour when the riot police use hand-handed force and violence to disperse the crowds).
Read the Tourism Minister’s response as covered by Bernama below:
Difficult To Convince Foreigners That Malaysia Is A Peaceful Country — BERNAMA
KUALA LUMPUR, March 14 (Bernama) — Difficulty in convincing foreigners that Malaysia is a peaceful and stable country is the key barrier to them joining the Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) programme.
Tourism Minister Datuk Dr Ng Yen Yen said street demonstrations have negative impact on promotional efforts undertaken by the ministry.
“This is the key barrier preventing foreigners from staying in Malaysia for long period,” she said in a written reply to Teresa Kok (DAP-Seputeh) who asked about the breakdown of MM2H participants and barriers faced by the ministry.
Dr Ng said 17,203 foreigners from 119 countries joined MM2H programme from 2002-2011 and the most were China nationals with 2,857 applications.
“They are followed by citizens of Bangladesh (2,082), United Kingdom (1,789) and Japan (1,629).
“The profile of 8,479 participants established since 2007 found that 90.6 percent are male while the remaining 9.4 percent are female,” she added.
Initiatives taken to promote MM2H include encouraging foreign tour operators to offer “MM2H Inspection Tours” to tourists wishing to stay for long period.
Yet the Home Minister is claiming that Malaysia is a safer place, why is the Home Minister does not explain why the expatriates are going to leave in a so much more expensive country and not a ‘safer Malaysia’ to live ?
Also is banning street protest one way to show the world or the rating society that Malaysia is a ‘safer place’ ? For those who apply to live in this country are people who are rejected by many other countries for various reasons before ending in Malaysia ? I do not desire to live in a country with so many of their people on tongkats and wheelchairs, most of all a good education system for my kids and descendants !