专访Interview Bina Ramanand

Bina Ramanand
Coordinator of Foreign Spouses Support Group (FSSG)
外籍配偶支援团协调员

“我与马华妇女组的首次互动是在今年(2009)的6月，当时我是被邀请参与一个关于外籍配偶的专题论坛。当时的情况是非常令人兴奋和鼓舞的，大家都给予最大的支持。那是一个真正的平台。”

“出席该论坛的当晚，我哭了；因为它是如此的开放，我们甚至可以和移民厅的官员交流。从那里，我们真的是看见了很大的变化，因为我发现经过当天的交流后，我们看见了许多政策上的改变，包括足以导致亲人间疏远,或影响离婚妇女，配偶继子女权益政策上的改变。”

“此外，内政部也发放了许多的永久居留证和处理了一些推延已久的个案。我们觉得当天的交流会让移民厅的官员意识到了我们的困境。此外也引起各部门的注意，对此我很感激马华妇女组。”

“我必须说的是妇女组在每一个阶段给予我们非常多的支持与鼓励。她们甚至协助我们团结起来，目前我们正在准备备忘录。非常棒就是我们看见一位尊敬的副部长拿汀巴杜卡周美芬愿意花那么多的时间在这课题上与我们携手合作。”

当她知道马华妇女组有意邀请她参与该论坛的时候，的确让她感到万分的惊喜。

“为何她们不选择华裔呢？外籍配偶也有一些是华裔啊，但她们说由于我是外籍配偶支援团的协调员，所以希望我能够出席。这真的是让我们大开眼界，马华妇女组竟然愿意为其他种族提供援助，而这正是未来应该朝向的方向。”

“My first interaction with Wanita MCA was when I was invited as a panellist for the forum on non-citizen spouses in June (2009). It was exciting and very encouraging and everybody was very supportive. And really it [forum/ workshop] was a platform. I cried the night I came here for the forum because it was so open that we could actually discuss with the immigration officials. From there we saw kind of a leap into what has been happening… because I would like to think that after this discussion (during the forum/workshop) we saw a lot of changes- such as change in policy [affecting] estranged, divorced women, stepchildren of spouses … and [the Home Affairs] Ministry has released a lot of permanent residency status, [and] a lot of back log was cleared. We’d like to think that the discussion we had with immigration had opened up avenues for them to realise our difficulties… and [that] it created awareness on various ministries, for that I have to say thank you to Wanita MCA.”

“I have to say at every step wanita gave us a lot of support, encouragement. They even called us in to help us organise ourselves and we were also in the midst of preparing a memorandum. In that we saw Datin Paduka Chew Mei Fun working hands on with us and that was really tremendous to be actually seeing the honourable Deputy Minister to come out and spend so much time personally towards this issue.”

She was rather surprised when she learned that Wanita MCA intended to invite her to be a panellist for the forum last June.

“Wouldn’t they want Chinese? They have Chinese foreign spouses as well but … they said they’d like me to be there since I am the coordinator of the FSSG. So it really opened my eyes as well as many of us that Wanita MCA is open to helping all races and that is really the way forward.”