IPOH: His savings with the Employees\u2019 Provident Fund (EPF) have all been used to clear his youngest son\u2019s debts to loan sharks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve paid about RM70,000 to the ah longs,\u201d said a 59-year-old waiter, who wanted to be known only as Foo.<\/p>\n
Yet, these illegal money lenders have not stopped harassing him.<\/p>\n
\u201cEach time they call, they would demand a different amount,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Foo, who is pleading to the loan sharks to stop hounding his family and his neighbours, said he no longer has money to settle his 22-year-old son\u2019s debts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is useless to harass us,\u201d he said at a press conference organised by Pasir Pinji assemblyman Goh See Hua here yesterday.<\/p>\n
Foo added that his 54-year-old wife has been suffering from depression and that her condition had worsened due to stress.<\/p>\n
He said he had been contacted by several loan sharks between Dec 27 last year and Jan 4 this year, and that they had threatened to splash paint and burn his house down if he does not settle his son\u2019s debt.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhite and red paint was splattered in front of my house on Jan 12 and 13.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the loan shark won\u2019t say how much in total my son owes them,\u201d said Foo, who is a father of three.<\/p>\n
He said he believed his son had borrowed from the loan sharks to feed his online gambling.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe works as a salesman and travels throughout the country most of the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe would only come home to ask for money to repay the debt and would leave after I transfer it to his bank account,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Foo said he had not been able to get in touch with him since seeing him last month.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want him to come back, take responsibility and settle the problem himself,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Goh cautioned about the dangers of gambling, saying: \u201cGambling is not a \u2018quick money\u2019 solution. It\u2019s better for people to earn money the old-fashioned way, which is through work.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s just no end for anyone who gets too consumed with gambling, especially when they borrow money from loan sharks,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"IPOH: His savings with the Employees\u2019 Provident Fund (EPF) have all been used to clear his youngest son\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415318,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[28,103570,2754,107721,198936,89883,198932,198933,3163,198935,147,530,198934],"class_list":["post-415317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-debts","tag-depression","tag-employees-provident-fund","tag-goh-see-hua","tag-harassment","tag-ipoh","tag-loan-sharks","tag-online-gambling","tag-pasir-pinji","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-salesman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}