How the DDP that’s currently running this country is still, BULLSHITTING, WE the people here, feeding us lies, neglecting those who are, really, in need of help, of getting back on their feet again, off of the Front Page Sections, translated…
Awhile back, as the president and the VP went to promote the candidate of the mayor of Keelung, a middle aged man who claimed that “life is getting hard” flashed a knife and started cutting himself. This seemingly isolated incident, actually reflected how the bottom half of the socioeconomic are currently stuck deep in the mud and the muck, how they’re having it too hard, making their ends, meet.
Before the money of the travel reimbursements are about to get used up completely, I’d taken that last train to Taichung. As I’d walked into the Taipei Main Station, I’d had to pass the group of homeless who are camped there; exiting the Taichung Train Station, what greeted me was also, a group of the local homeless, with the skies as their roof, they’re, way too far away, from traveling for leisure, they would NOT be fighting us for this huge piece of the pie, and it’d made me, who’s, getting reimbursements from the government for the trips feel, a bit, ashamed.
I was tired in the early evenings, found a bench in a local park to sit and rest, then, a middle age man came over to chat. The man told he was from Taidong, that he’d worked any jobs available to him in Taichung, because someone was ill back home and needed the money for treatment, he’d sent most of what he’d made back home. Being older, can’t find stable work, he’d slept in the park, and when he felt hungry, he’d ridden the bicycles to ten, twenty kilometers away to find food in the free food fridge that’s been set up.
I’d originally thought, he’d wanted some money from him to help him out, but instead, he just, wanted someone to talk to. Being half-homeless, everybody in the park would evade him, the spirits are afraid of the poor, nobody wants to be bothered with him, he was, forced to, become, silenced. Turns out, the aloofness of the outside world was way harder for him to bear than the hunger.
I’d asked him: I think the companies are hiring all around, if you’d worked every day, you wouldn’t be staying in the parks! He’d told, how he was not young anymore, without any specific skills, that he’d had to get interviewed, trying to find work at the construction sites.
I’d joked and asked him, “did the scam group ask you to go to Cambodia from before?”, he’d laughed bitterly, told me, “they only want the younger generations. The middle aged like me, the scam artists don’t even want, you can see, how hard it is, for the middle aged to return back to the workforce now, right?
A lot of middle aged, and elderly can only pick up the recycling materials and sell them, and yet, inflation is hitting hard, even after a whole day’s worth of collecting the recyclable materials, you may still not have enough for the three meals. In fact, inflation is a global problem, and what made the people upset, is how someone kept on, reiterating, you’re living in an era of economical growth, like you’re in heaven. But in actually, you feel like you’re living in a dog-eat-dog world.
And, this difference between the realities and what the government perceived, is where the problem rests.
The pandemic caused a lot to lose their jobs, the middle aged, due to their age, their specific skill sets, found it hard to find work again. Last year at the Kaohsiung Train Station, I’d met a middle aged man who’d sold the “Big Times Magazine”. This is a magazine, set up to help those who are in need, for every copy sold, the vendor gets fifty-percent of the amount, and every time I see these being sold, I’d always, purchased a copy. That middle aged man stood in the scorching heat of the midday sun, worked hard, to sell the volumes, but, nobody paid him any attention, I’d asked him: there’s a beggar beside you in the shades, all he did was place that bowl in front of him, don’t you feel tried?
He’d told me: if I were to sit down, it would be, impossible for me, to get back up again.
I admit, that there are the more passive homeless, and there are also, the proactive, the hardworking ones, like the middle age man, shouldn’t the government lend them a helping hand, before they sat down, for good?
There’s this serious lacking of manpower in Taiwan, the retired population will make up the workers in the futures, they only needed some guidance, some help from the government, to counsel them, to help them gain a viable skill through job training, and if the government set up the help stations, then, it would help those who are still wanting to work to return back to work, to reduce a lot of the problems in the society, those with a stage they can put their skills to use on, will be healthier, which will reduce the cost of healthcare.
I suggest, that the government stop boasting the unrealistic beliefs, and, buckle down on actually helping those who are in need, as those mottos will only, separate the people, and the ones in power.
And yet, instead of giving the more practical sort of help (i.e. job training, etc., etc., etc.), the government’s giving out “free money”, attempting to fool the people with the spending vouchers, the free-for-all, reimbursement travel vouchers, etc., etc., etc., and all of these are our taxpayers’ money that the government’s, squandering away, and to think how much the amount that they’re now, wasting away can help those who are in need, if the amount was put to better use, like providing the job training for the homeless, but the government doesn’t do that at all!
Mirroring the World 
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