Getting rid of the poor is not eradicating poverty
By Zan Azlee

Okay sure. The Federal Territories minister has cleared the air on his remarks regarding soup kitchens operating in the city of Kuala Lumpur.

Apparently, he did not say that soup kitchens providing free meals for the poor and homeless in the city will not be allowed to continue with their work.

His rules are for these soup kitchens to operate only outside a 2km radius from the Lot 10 and Bukit Bintang area, so that they won’t dirty the area.

That’s a fair and reasonable request, I would say. But I guess that this would still be a good time to talk about the issue of these non-profit soup kitchens and the plight of the homeless.

The fact that anyone can actually think that just by providing free food we are encouraging the homeless and jobless to stay jobless, is ridiculous.

I doubt that a homeless and poverty-stricken person has anything else going to want to stay in that situation, just because he or she gets to eat for free once or twice a week.

By giving free haircuts and maybe a set of clean clothes to them does not mean that they don’t face any other problems the rest of their lives and are care free.

For a homeless and jobless person to come out of his situation, cutting off the supply of free hot meals does not help one bit at all. [Click to read the full article at The Malaysian Insider]