As I’ve said over and over for years, Barisan Nasional is so dirty and rotten that it should be called ‘Basiran’ Nasional. Its members and cronies are so corrupt - and otherwise criminal - that they give a whole new dimension of meaning to the term “filthy” rich, and its form of alleged government is so grubby that it is nothing but ‘grubbernment’.

And as if these facts hadn’t been sufficiently evidenced by a ceaseless series of financial and other assorted scandals for at least the past four decades, up to and including the ongoing atrocities of RM42 billion from SRC International and RM2.6 billion ‘donated’ to Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, now there’s a frenzy of dirty work surrounding the issue of dirty jobs.

According to a typically self-serving BN myth, Malaysians can’t be found to work in jobs that are not just dirty, but also dangerous and difficult - as in construction and similar industries.

Or, as Home Minister and Deputy Prime (Grime?) Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi put it the other day in justification of the ‘grubbernment’s’ determination to import an additional 1.5 million workers from Bangladesh over the next three years, “Malaysians simply do not want to work in certain sectors.”

“How many would want to work under the sun and in the rain in the construction sector? How many would want to work in the dirty, dangerous and difficult sector? No one,” he claimed.

The right question

Of course, his question should by rights have been: “How many Malaysians want to work in dirty, dangerous and difficult jobs - not to mention jobs in the domestic-service and hospitality industries - that are currently largely reserved for imported workers, under virtual slave labour conditions and for comparative pittances?”

Because the plain fact is that Malaysians, like their fellows in my own and, indeed, most other countries, would gladly work in just about any job in return for sufficient pay and proper conditions.

But sweated, low-cost foreign labour delivers richer profits to the businesses of members, cronies and supporters of the BN regime, and the benefit of cheap servants for voters too idle or incompetent to perform their own housework and child-care.

Plus rich pickings, of course, for BN-connected ‘immigration’ and other ‘agents’ reaping ‘commissions’ from a system that is little better than licensed people-trafficking, and probably easy pocket-money for the police, People's Volunteer Corps (Rela) and other stand-over merchants who target foreign workers for kickbacks, and a massive ‘bank’ of more potential, presumably BN-inclined Muslim voters, if and when required by the BN regime.

Naturally, Zahid has strenuously denied any financial, electoral or other vested interest in the planned importation of 1.5 million more Bangladeshi workers - though it emerges that a company headed by his brother Abdul Hakim Hamidi, Real Time Networking Sdn Bhd, may be getting in for its chop.

Meanwhile Zahid’s stated justification for this whole dirty business - which included the simultaneous doubling of levy charges on foreign workers in some sectors - has morphed from his initial and utterly unbelievable claim that it was “a positive move to reduce dependence on foreign workers”, to the equally incredible contention that it has nothing to do with him or BN whatsoever.

“It’s not the government that wanted to bring in the workers,” he ‘explained’ just the other day.

“The government listened to the demands of employers who stated that their companies couldn’t function due to lack of manpower.

“The government’s concern... is not because we want to collect levy charges but because we want to fulfill the demands of the market,” he went on, adding the exhortation “don’t blame me, don’t blame the government, don’t blame the Home Ministry and don’t blame the Human Resources Ministry.”

Lame no-blame game

Lo and behold, the human resources minister - a person previously unheard-of but apparently aptly named Richard Riot - has gone even further with this lame no-blame game by refuting claims that the country will bring in 1.5 million Bangladeshi workers at all.

According to Malaysiakini , Riot declared : “The figure (of 1.5 million) that has been mentioned is actually the number of Bangladeshi workers who have registered seeking for jobs (around the world). This is not the number which will be recruited (by Malaysia).”

In short, like many of BN’s more recent attempts to do the dirty on Malaysians and get clean away with it, this dirty jobs rort is turning into a riot of rot.

Even more so since, as I was writing the above, Malaysiakini reported that just the day after signing the memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Bangladesh for Malaysia’s recruitment of more workers, Zahid had announced a total freeze on the importation of foreign labour.

So now this rotten situation is in even more ridiculous. And thus even more urgently encouraging of us all to work harder, smarter and more resolutely than ever at the dirty but desperately necessary job of throwing the BN dirty-workers out of office and seeing them sentenced to jail.

Preferably, of course, with hard labour, and without foreign imports to do it for them.

DEAN JOHNS, after many years in Asia, currently lives with his Malaysian-born wife and daughter in Sydney, where he coaches and mentors writers and authors and practises as a writing therapist. Published books of his columns for Malaysiakini include ‘Mad about Malaysia', ‘Even Madder about Malaysia', ‘Missing Malaysia', ‘1Malaysia.con’ and ‘Malaysia Mania’.