Welfare Department blasted for Thaipusam gaffe

A message on the department's Facebook page extends Thaipusam greetings to Buddhists instead of Hindus.

PETALING JAYA: It is now the Social Welfare Department’s (JKMM) turn to become the object of ridicule among Malaysians following a cultural gaffe on its Facebook page.

The department’s Facebook status message yesterday read “Selamat Menyambut Thaipusam kpd mereka beragama Buddha” (HappyThaipusam to those who are Buddhists).

Thaipusam is celebrated by Hindus while Buddhists celebrate Wesak. The JKMM’s Facebook administrator realised the mistake and updated the status message to “Selamat Menyambut Thaipusam” (Happy Thaipusam) fifteen minutes later.

However the previous message was not removed leading to a flurry of indignant and incredulous comments from the public.

The department was slammed as “stupid”, “ignorant”, “an embarrassment” and “insensitive” with a number of commenters calling for an apology and a removal of the offending message.

“More than 50 years of independence and this is the sort of rubbish we get from a totally wasted and incompetent government,” wrote Krish Kumar.

“Perhaps (JKMM) needs to go back to school and learn which religious celebrations belong to which religion…this is seriously a disgusting display of ignorance,” said Suzanne Lazaroo.

“Ni bukan kata bodoh tapi jahil…JKM patut membuat permohonan maaf secara terbuka akibat kesilapan ni (This isn’t stupidity but ignorance…JKM should issue an open apology for this mistake),” stated Azhar Aris.

A few commenters also predicted that JKMM would follow in the footsteps of the Defence Ministry in blaming the mistake on “bad translation”.

The Defence Minstry recently found itself the laughing stock of Malaysians for blunders on its English site and pointed its finger at Google Translate.

JKMM’s faux pas comes just days after Putrajaya member of parliament, Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor, apologised for the Tamil translation and spelling errors on Thaipusam banners placed around the constituency.

The banners were taken down a day later.