The northeast monsoon season recently brought about massive floods, damaging the environment and properties and imposing hardships on people who found themselves trapped in submerged dwellings and roads.
Most flood victims were those living in Kelantan, Perlis, Perak, Selangor, Kedah, Terengganu, Penang and Pahang. There were also reports of a few deaths arising from the flooding.
It’s bad enough to fall victim to floods in one’s own country, but it’s a lot more harrowing to be hit by floods in a foreign land.
A total of 6,222 Malaysians, mostly holidaymakers, were stranded in Hat Yai after floods struck the city in southern Thailand.
Among them were young children, pregnant women and older people, for whom the floods, the cold and a lack of food and water especially posed a great challenge.
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A group of Malaysian university students and their lecturers, who were on a cultural exchange programme, were trapped in their hotel. Like the rest of the stranded Malaysians, they are safe now.
Help from the local Thais was said to be insufficient while uncertainty and unfamiliarity hung in the air for the Malaysians, which was why a few desperately sought assistance from fellow Malaysians in Malaysia itself.
The United Sikhs Malaysia volunteers were reportedly the first to answer the call for help from these unfortunate Malaysians.
The humanitarian non-profit organisation swiftly dispatched its large trucks and boats to Hat Yai to start much-needed relief work.
Challenges were many, but these did not break the determination of the United Sikhs to try to save the lives of the Malaysians there.
In one case, a few of the United Sikhs volunteers themselves were stranded in a hotel. In another instance, one of their boats capsized after hitting a sharp object. But they soldiered on.
Driven by the Malaysian spirit, other volunteers, such as the Sungai Petani volunteer fire and rescue team, chipped in for the sake of the stranded. This was indeed commendable.
It was in this context that the guiding philosophy of the United Sikhs became ever more significant to us all, which is to promote “diversity, equality and the elimination of discrimination based on age, religion or belief – for the betterment of all communities”.
To be sure, this commitment to serving humanity came from a minority group in Malaysia. This underlines the important values of empathy and compassion, in the hope of reinforcing society’s moral fibre.
The volunteers understand that discriminatory practices can not only divide us as the people of Malaysia but also cause painful injustice to victims.
We’re not ‘Malaysian’ when we turn a blind eye to an injustice perpetrated against someone who is not ‘our kind’. That isn’t being morally upright or inclusive. Not does that amount to celebrating diversity.
‘Being Malaysian’ obviously shouldn’t prevail only when we are at the mercy of natural calamities or when our humanity is experiencing a collective challenge.
Indeed, being truly Malaysian and humane shouldn’t be as seasonal as the encroaching monsoon. – Malay Mail
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