Unwanted Visitors

Dear Residents,

Apologies for the long silence as work has sort of caught up in recent days. I hope you all had a good Merdeka weekend and to all our Muslim brothers and sisters, I would like to wish you all "Selamat Berpuasa" and may you attain all the good things that god has wished for you in this very holy month of Ramadan.

And speaking of the holy month, there are some unscrupulous people who are making their rounds in our neighbourhood soliciting donations in the name of Islam.

It is most certainly not an isolated case as in Kuala Lumpur and in certain areas of PJ, you might have seen "Buddhist monks" in orange robes asking for donations in return for alms. Well, these are bogus monks as real monks DO NOT do this.

This is also a tactic for such people to collect donation on behalf of Orphanages. Do you know that such people are "hired" to collect money? They operate by showing you some pictures of unfortunate kids, some letters purportedly signed off by some officials. Most time, we cannot authenticate their claims.

Even if they do pay the money eventually to the Orphanages, it will probably be substantially less than what you have donated originally as from the money collected purportedly for the orphanages, they would have taken their "fair" share of the "commission" and other related expenses, not to mention the cut for their "bosses" or people who had recruited them!

I guess these sort of people will do anything for free money and what with Malaysians generally very generous and willing to donate to the less fortunate, they will use such sentiments to enrich themselves. Well, do not be taken in!

Here is an email from Michael (3M), one of our Committee member highlighting his neighbour, Nik's plight. Please do read the story below:


Jeff,

I got a complaint from my neighbor Nik this afternoon. He got a visit from 2 guys wearing in a typical muslim attire white shirt and a white songkok and they speak little English and no malay. This shows that they are foreigners. What was shocking is that they were asking for donations for muslim cause and they even requested him to go to the bank to withdraw money for the donations. He have asked the guards to stop these people from coming in to prevent other muslim residents to be pushed into making this “donations”.

Maybe you can put this up in the blog to warn our muslim residents about this “so called donation” drive.

Best Regards

Michael Chow

Now coming back to our point, there will be people taking advantage of these situations. My take on this is, if you really want to donate, take the initiative to find out if you are actually donating to a legitimate body, be it religious or otherwise. Do check and make sure that they are a running and legitimate NGO, religious organization, etc, so that they are assured of getting your generous donations. As for the Muslims, well I am not an expert but I do believe there are zakat that you can contribute to.

These people who are doing their rounds for such unsolicited gains in our neighbourhood will be stopped from entering into our area in the future. They have no business coming in and we will not allow them to do so. This is also for the sake of safety and unncessary harassment from such people.

And if you have you come across such people, please do highlight it to us as soon as possible. Better still, have your camera ready, snap a shot and send it to us. We will publish it in our blogsite and will also distribute it amongst our guards so that they can keep a lookout and to prevent such people from coming in.

Have a pleasant day otherwise!

Jeffrey Khoo
Advisor
11 Trees @ USJ