Welfare Month: Day [TBA]

Good morning. I hope everyone had a good long weekend. My family stayed put in KL and basically did family things; movies, swim, lake gardens and sports. I even walked with my kids to the neighbourhood mall after dinner to get some ice cream. It was a relaxed and fun 3 days.

On Friday 4.45pm last week, just when we were about to close office, my office received a fax from the Selangor government. Having discussed the matter with my staff, we decided to suspend our Welfare Month program until further notice. We have to date processed some 300 plus applications for Welfare Month. As time is of the essence, my staff and interns will be going to Desa Mentari this morning to put up public notices and we will also be calling community leaders to inform them. We need to bring the message quickly to the ground so that the poor will not spend any more of their little money for transport to visit my office.

We are also very busy today writing 355 individual letters to constituents that we interviewed last week for Bulan Kebajikan.

All the applicants are poor and have taken time and effort to come to our office for the interviews. Today we still have people coming here and we have to continue to apologise and turn them away. We have put up posters and started a leafleting campaign too in our urban poor zones. Most of my constituents shared taxi fares to come here from Desa Mentari. The least we can do is to formally apologise to them via an official letter.

When things settle down a bit more next week, I will be consulting my lawyers and auditors on the next most appropriate course of action. For now, it is all hands on deck with the priority of informing the poor to stop spending money in order to come to my office for Bulan Kebajikan.

Accordingly, my office will cease community allocations and refocus on our primary work which is the Parliamentary work of public policy research and the policy research training of our interns.

Wishing all a productive week ahead.