Although loan sharking or the soliciting and securing of funds from ‘Ah Long’s’ have received a lot of negative and bad press especially in local daily The Star newspaper, yet it continues to thrive and prosper.

But while it is only the loan sharks who are prospering, the borrowers find themselves in a flux and flurry of woes, problems and crises which is to suggest that these loan sharks don’t really solve but exacerbate the situation of those who are financially distressed.

Not a single person known to have borrowed from loan sharks has come away happy and satisfied by borrowing from them, and, in fact, what the eventual outcome evolves into is that borrowers become modern day slaves.

But not only the borrower, his family, his loved ones, their finances and incomes, their health, their relationships, their studies or work or business problems become complex and complicated with no solution is sight that quite a number commit suicide in the end.

This is why money lending of all kinds, whether legal or illegal, must be abolished and made a criminal offence, and the government, under the ministry of finance, must set up a special unit to cater to these borrowers to discourage loan sharking.

Since loan sharking and other money lending activities have proven and provided ample evidence that it is now another social ill plaguing the nation, it is high time for the government to intervene in this scenario to set things right once and for all.

-THE MALAYSIA VOICE