SHAH ALAM, June 13 — Putrajaya’s plan to round up the city’s homeless, rehabilitate them and send them back into society is too simplistic and flawed a solution to keep them off the streets, DAP MP Dr Ong Kian Ming said today.

The Serdang MP said it was clear the government does not understand the deep-rooted issues that result in homelessness, including social ills such as gambling, drug problems and alcoholism, abuse at home and others.

He noted that some homeless individuals are ex-convicts who could not find gainful employment or foreigners whose visas have expired.

“Many of them cannot speak Bahasa Malaysia or are illiterate which means they cannot have access to government resources and help such as BR1M (Bantuan Rakyat 1 Malaysia). Some of them don’t have proper identification,” Ong pointed out in a statement here.

“Hence... to assume that they can just get jobs at supermarkets and hypermarkets which are currently filled by foreigners after they have been ‘rehabilitated’ is clearly a mistaken assumption.

“Just because some of these jobs are low-skilled such as ‘arranging stock, arranging trolleys and sweeping’, does not mean that each and every homeless person can take up these jobs is clearly mistaken,” he said.

It was reported yesterday that the government is planning a major crackdown on KL’s homeless and beggars - an operation dubbed “Ops Qaseh” that will see the authorities rounding up the group for a rehabilitation programme.

Minister Datuk Seri Rohani Abdul Karim said the major operation will be initiated by her Women, Family and Community Development Ministry (KPWKM), aided by the police, the Immigration Department, the City Council (DBKL) and the National Anti-Drug Agency (AADK).

This operation will first place the homeless and beggars in the Sungai Buloh ‘reintegration’ centre where they will be given ‘food and lodging, counselling, recreational facilities, healthcare and practical training such as agriculture, vocational skills and handicraft’.

They will later be released back into society where they are expected to find employment.

But Ong argued that the plan to place them at the Sungai Buloh ‘reintegration’ centre was akin to “imprisonment”.

“This basically amounts to imprisonment for the homeless - which is not a crime - there is no guarantee that the comprehensive list of ‘services’ listed by the minister will be adequately provided for in these halfway homes,” the DAP man said.

Ong also raised concerns that the homeless and beggars may be treated badly while the rehabilitation camps may not provide adequate services for them, particularly when there has been reports that officers at government welfare homes have refused to take in those who needed help.

He cited as example Anjung Singgah, a ministry-sponsored homeless shelter at Jalan Hang Lekiu run by the National Welfare Foundation where there have been reports that journalists who posed as homeless people were turned away by the staff at this shelter including a person who claimed to be a officer from the contentious voluntary corp RELA,” he said.

The Serdang MP urged Putrajaya to set up a Joint Ministerial Working Group to coordinate a comprehensive and systematic effort to understand and then tackle the homeless issue instead of taking a heavy handed approach of declaring ‘war’ on the homeless.

Citing the UK as example, Ong said the panel should consist of the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development Ministry, the Home Minister, the Minister of Health, the Ministry of Human Resources, the Minister for the Federal Territories and the office of the Mayor of Wilayah Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur.

“This working group must engage with the relevant stakeholders including the NGOs who are working with the homeless on a daily basis.

“Without a well thought out strategy, what will inevitably happen is that the same homeless people who will be rounded up next month, in July, will end up back on the streets of KL before long, perhaps in a worse condition compared to before they were hauled up,” he said.