Friday, April 2, 2010

Do biometrics help in pest control?

The author regret having posted the following paragraphs, and he has extended his sincere apologies here.

Let's look for a moment at the pest problem at our house. Pests - like cocroaches, termites, rats, etc - could annoy us in many ways: a mere sight of them may disgust or even scare us off; they pollute our food and destroy our belongings; they find a suitable corner tao live, and multiply! And so we buy cans of Ridsect, Shieldtox; lay rat traps; and so on to exterminate these pests, or at least control them. However, just like diseases, prevention is better than cure - or as pestexterminatenow.com may suggest,"Be Inhospitable!"




I've just watched the Edisi 7, the 7pm news on NTV7. The headline was on illegal immigrants risking their lives to escape from getting caught by our security forces. Apparently Pasar Selayang employs some of those foreign workers captured by NTV7's camera in action, as they scurried across a six-lane highway - in the middle of the night. If I'm not mistaken, an officer reported that there were about a thousand illegal aliens at that location, but the law enforcers have only managed to capture eleven of them.

Next, Dato' Seri Hishamuddin was interviewed on this issue - in a surprisingly small office (which I guess/hope was not his). What I learnt from the interview was that Malaysia would very likely employ biometrics at our borders to recognize all immigrants in the near future (not necessarily be at the end of the year, I heard). This biometric system is currently in operation in the US, Japan and Singapore. Now why am I asking this question: Do biometrics help in pest control? Let's compare the illegal immigrant issue with our pest problems at home - and see how we could possibly resolve the matter effectively. First let me say that I don't mean to devalue the lives of illegal immigrants to the level of common pests. This only serves as an analogy to solve the problem that they're causing in our country.

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Medical practitioner. Amateur philosopher, pianist and composer.