The Story of the Homeless Man!

 

When Safiudeen Pakkeer Mohamed boarded a plane from Tamil Nadu to Malaysia in 2024 to seek a living, he thought it would be the start of a better life. He did not imagine he would make the news by being humiliated for sleeping outside a bank in Kuala Lumpur. All he had sought was a life that would enable him to feed his wife and two sons, aged 11 and eight, and lift his family out of poverty. Instead, the 39-year-old ended up sleeping on the five-foot-way, going hungry, and finally being humiliated in front of a bank, by being kicked and splashed with water.

Source: https://simple.wikipedia.org

A video clip on the incident brought good samaritan Tony Lian to his rescue, and Safiudeen was taken to a shelter run by Lian. Safiudeen said he arrived in Malaysia in March 2024 to take up a job with a restaurant in Sri Gombak, Kuala Lumpur, where he earned a modest wage as a cook. But his employer withheld his passport and his wages, sometimes for months. He wanted to quit but they would not let him go. They said they still wanted him. Unable to take it any more, he stopped going to work six months ago. 

After he stopped going to work, he had nowhere to go and was forced to seek shelter from friends, until they eventually closed their doors to him, leaving him with a cold, hard alternative – to sleep on the five-foot-way. Fast forward a few months, Safiudeen came across a restaurant, near an AmBank branch in Taman Maluri, Cheras, whose employees were kind enough to feed him. For the next couple of days, he decided to sleep outside the bank, until he was splashed with water and kicked – an incident which was caught on camera. 

There are foreigners, there are locals who are homeless, it does not matter. We need to be compassionate to understand their story. But the bank has no time for this. 

No problem. Just contribute to a Fund for the Homeless administered or initiated by Bank Negara Malaysia (“BNM”). Why BNM? Then it will be administered with an outsourced professional team and all banks will contribute RM10m or more to the Fund as CSR. The Fund will rent buildings (including former hotels) for housing homeless people in urban areas for a period until they are on their feet again. Isn’t that Madani? 

Reference:

Living the nightmare: homeless man outside bank tells his story, Minderjeet Kaur, FMT, 29 November 2025