Day Two

Second day into the job, and i've had my first encounter of people desperate for help with some rather serious problems.

I was sent out with another intern to follow up a story on the bridge at the recently opened (then closed) middle ring road 2 (MRR2) near Batu Caves, all the way at Gombak. After some fruitless queries on several construction workers, it seemed that several different contractors were hired to work on the bridge. At one point, we met an old security guard patrolling one stretch of the repair works. Naturally he was curious about what we were doing there asking for the supervisors. Upon learning that we were journalists (in training anyway....) from a newspaper, he tentatively asked, "how much do you have to pay to get on television?"
For a second there, I was a little confused as to why he'd ask this really unexpected question, right out of the blue. And then he told us his story.

Apparently, he was a Sabahan, and his hometown is in KK. A close relative of his has a family abuse problem. That relative's husband had used a knife to slash and stab their children not once, but twice already. The husband was detained by the police for one night, but was released the next day despite his serious crimes and the security guard was in a quandary as he could not return home personally due to his work commitments in the mainland. And this caused him no small amount of distress and anguish, as the perpetrator was still loose and able to harm others. He asked us if we could take up his case, perhaps like what they did in those tv programs like 999 or Kisah Benar.
I also felt then the frustration of not being able to help the man directly, as all we could do then was sympathise, as the local branch of the newspaper certainly would not cover this man's story and the best we could do was get him into contact with our office and get a number to the Sabah branch of the newspaper, and hope they would pick up this man's case and follow it up.