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This blogger went through the horrendous years of 1984-87, when Ipoh and the whole of the Kinta Valley were going through the throes of the tin industry collapse. Having wanted to write about this terrible period for some time, he has finally posted on it, thanks to his cousin, S H Chen, whose forwarded email was the trigger.

Thanks, Chen!

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Please comment on this post with your experiences and thoughts, or the experiences of others you know.

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The Collapse of the International Tin Council and the Aftermath

When the International Tin Council collapsed due to its debt of £900,000,000, it led to the suspension of trading on the London Metal Exchange on Oct 24, 1985.

That, in turn, caused the collapse of the tin industry in the Kinta Valley, Perak. The repercussions on the whole of the Kinta Valley were horrendous. Men and women lost their jobs. They stood to lose everything else. Those who kept their jobs did not get paid. Tin mines had nothing to pay them with. Those who supplied the mines could not get any payment. Others who supplied the suppliers were, in turn, not paid. The ripple effect multiplied hardships and suffering. The school where I taught cut pay all around, from the Principal to the lowest office boy. At least we got paid.

Being Chinese, whose grandparents and parents had come from China to seek work, these people of Ipoh, Kampar, Tapah and all over the Kinta Valley, knew what to do: GO WHERE THERE WERE JOBS! Like those before them, if they had to go where there was work, they would do so.

The first 500 men and women from Bercham in Ipoh left home and family to work overseas. ILLEGALLY. They went to wherever there were jobs: Japan, Hong Kong, Germany, the UK and America. In America, New York was the favorite.

They got off the plane, holding multiple re-entry visas, never to get on the return flight. Thus was coined the term for them: they were said to have “jumped aeroplane”.

These illegal workers sent money home. This supported their family, paid off housing loans, and financed their children’s education. Many of my students had parents who had “jumped aeroplane”.

This Post will tell something of the background and circumstances that caused the collapse of the International Tin Council and with it, the almost complete destruction of the tin industry in Malaysia. It will post on the emigration of breadwinners from Ipoh and other towns in Perak to other parts of the world.

There will even be a story or two of people who were there in New York, when the Twin Towers were destroyed. They were there on NINE ELEVEN (9/11).

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TALES OF ILLEGAL WORKERS OVERSEAS

(1) The story of Yin
Here’s the story of a young girl. I shall call her Yin. She was waiting for her SPM result and her family had plans for her to “jump aeroplane”  and work in the United States. Both her parents were already in the US, working illegally.

Yin needed an American visa. Her family had thought of a plan. Yin’s grandmother, who was old but strong and healthy, would apply for a visa to visit the United States. She explained to the US Embassy that she wanted her granddaughter, Yin, to accompany her. Yin was her favourite grandchild. Could the US Embassy please grant an old woman her life-long wish, to see the US, before she was too old and weak to travel?

When both grandmother and grandddaughter got their visas, only Yin went to the US, which was the plan all along. She went to the South, “jumped aeroplane”, and worked at a restaurant. Later, she married the owner, an immigrant from another Southeast Asian country.

Several years later, I got a surprise visit from her when she returned to Ipoh to visit her grandmother, siblings and parents (who had returned for good). Yin was holding a baby in her arms, her first child.

Yin is still in the US.

(2) A comment by a friend,Kenny Toong, Calgary, Alberta

I met 23 of them all from Ipoh. Most of them return home with 500,00.00Ringgit; hard earned 6 day working week. I admire them for their resilience and coping with loneliness away from their families. BN MCA will not help them hence they have to look after themselves and their families. BN gave 250 million to a minister’s husband and what did they did with the taxpayers dollars – condos, trips abroad, Mercedes Benz.

(3)Another friend, P H Teoh, commented

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What kinds of work do illegal immigrants get in New York?

From Wikipedia

Illegal immigrants can be found working in almost every industry in New York City performing a wide variety of tasks. More than half of all dishwashers in the city are illegal immigrants, as are a third of all sewing machine operators, painters, cooks, construction laborers, and food preparation workers. Illegal immigrants also make up close to 30 percent of the city’s automotive service technicians & mechanics, waiters & waitresses, maids & housekeeping cleaners, and carpenters. The five occupations with the most illegal immigrant workers in New York City are cooks (21,000), janitors & building cleaners (19,000), construction laborers (17,000), maids & housekeeping cleaners (16,000), and waiters & waitresses (15,000).

Search results

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My cousin, who died recently in Ipoh, and his wife went twice to New York to work. He worked as a tailor, and his wife as a childminder for the same boss. They were provided with a room, and at least a meal a day.

An ex-teacher, 58, “jumped aeroplane” in New York in 2000, and worked in a warehouse. His job? Lugging cartons of books from truck to warehouse, or from warehouse to truck. It was physical work, very hard on a man his age. But it paid well. His wife was legally employed as a nurse, having gone there several years before. They saved a lot of US$, and converted it to ringgit at the pegged rate of US$1 = Rm3.80.

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The International Tin Council

International Tin Council – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Tin_Council – Cached
More results from en.wikipedia.org

The International Tin Council was an organization which acted on behalf of the principal tin producers in Cornwall and Malaysia to buy up surplus tin stocks to maintain the price at a steady level.

The organization was established in 1956, following on from the work of the International Tin Study Group, which was established in 1947 to survey the world supply and demand of tin.

Copyright (c) 1989 Northwestern University School of Law

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

COMMENT: Cartel in a Can: The Financial Collapse of the International Tin Council

Fall, 1989

10 NW. J. INT’L L. & BUS. 309

Author

Sandhya Chandrasekhar

Excerpt

I. INTRODUCTION

In 1985, the International Tin Council (the “ITC”), the operative arm of the Sixth International Tin Agreement ¹ (the “ITA 6”), collapsed due to debt. ² Under the ITA 6 and earlier tin agreements, several sovereign states had joined together to form a tin cartel. This cartel, known as the ITC, incurred this debt over time to fund its efforts to control the supply and market price of tin. On October 24, 1985, however, the ITC announced that it was unable to repay those debts or to fulfill its contractual obligations to purchase tin. When the creditors turned to the member states of the cartel for payment, the member states refused to pay any of the ITC’s debts, which are estimated at £ 900,000,000. ³ In England, two of the ITC’s creditors, Maclaine Watson & Co. and J.H. Rayner, sued the ITC members for payment of the ITC’s debts…

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The following was forwarded by S N Chen.

Subject: FW: BN turned Ipoh into “Ngah Choy Kai”
Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2011 07:51:57 +1100

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Time Magazine

The Crushed Tin Cartel

By William J. Mitchell Monday, Apr. 18, 2005

Trading was halted after the International Tin Council, a cartel made up of 22 leading tin-producing and-consuming nations, found itself short of cash to finance its operation.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1050637,00.html#ixzz1g99zcF0

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