Africans In Malaysia - An Increasing Menace.

AFRICANS are no longer just customers at brothels in Kuala Lumpur's Bukit Bintang area – now many of them are the ones running the business, Harian Metro reported.

The daily said many Africans have been running some of the brothels since the middle of the year. It is understood that they could earn up to RM1,000 a day as pimps compared to their previous job of selling watches and leather products.

A survey by the Metro team found that the awang hitam (black guys) gang loitered around the area and sat in front of brothels. They offered prostitutes in their premises only to foreigners, as it is easier to make a bigger profit, the paper said. The Africans are also rich enough to spend thousands of ringgit every month on rented cars to chauffeur prostitutes from their homes to the brothels.

Dang Wangi OCPD Asst Comm Kamal Pasha was quoted as saying that many of them continue to live a life of crime as they had no proper occupation. He said the crime rate involving Africans was lower this year than last year as there had been more operations conducted by the police at their usual haunts.

**** I remember a diplomat from an African country who a couple of years ago reminded the Malaysian media not to generalise and refer as 'African' to whoever is charged for a crime hailing from that continent but specify the nationality. Fair enough. But how many of us can differentiate say a Nigerian from a Kenyan? Therefore I have no choice but to refer here to those from sub-Saharan Africa as 'Africans.'

They are increasingly becoming a menace especially in KL and Selangor. I know that most of us don't harbour racist feelings against these people and like all nationalities are welcome to come here and spend their vacation or get an education in our institutes of higher learning. But what they apparently are doing is nothing but abusing our hospitality and taking advantage of our openness. There is no reason why so many of them should be involved in crime if their real purpose here is to get an education.

Confidence tricksters among them are a dime a dozen and now it looks like they've 'diversified' and branched into prostitution. What next? The numbers racket? Bank robbery? Hired assassin? Weapons smuggling? The possibilities are endless and these people have no lack of genius.

Not that our own people are saints. Our monkeys have recently been caught in Taiwan, smuggle drugs into Australia, work illegally in Japan and do menial jobs on the sly (while on tourist visas) in Chinese restaurants in the US and Canada. But they are not part of any official programme bringing our slime into those countries. I wonder how many of these nationals of African countries are here as part of the South-South Cooperation schemes that were signed when Dr Mahathir was PM?

If they are here as semi-permanent residents for reasons other than as students or bona fide businessmen, then it is time our government took a firm decision and pack them home before they cause more trouble and misery here.