It is disturbing to read of news reports of foreigners committing crime in our country. It's bad enough that locals commit crime. Now it seems foreigners are doing the same thing. Worse, at the end of the day, it's the word 'Malaysia' that gets printed in foreign news report and not the country of origin of these foreign criminals.

Is our Royal Malaysian Police in such a terrible state? I hope not - for the sake of us Malaysians. In the past, we all agreed to just close an eye and ignore the crime problem. Now, we finally realise that we should have taken the problem more seriously.

We should not put the blame entirely on the shoulders of our overworked, overstretched, understaffed, ill-equipped, underfunded etc. police force. Perhaps in the good times we preferred more highways, higher petrol subsidies, cheaper cars, more white elephants, etc. rather than a safe living environment.

But now day in day out all we read news of foreigners committing crime against both locals and other foreigners here.

The South African diplomat won't be saying: 'I was kidnaped by Pakistanis'. He will be saying 'I had a terrible experience in Malaysia'. Is that what we need? Bad publicity?

It's about time the government wake up to this problem. More funding is needed for police enforcement. And make the police force more attractive. How? Better pay definitely. Also, get rid of the perception that there is no future in the police force and that corruption is part and parcel of the job.

If people can be made to think that the police force is a really viable occupation with good prospects, more people will join its ranks and we won't have such alarmingly high incidence of serious crimes.