If the outrage generated by Deputy International Trade and Industry Minister Ahmad Maslan’s two-jobs remark can be collected and used to fuel all the cars in the country, Petronas would have gone under by now.

Many Malaysian ministers’ remarks that are quoted to sound callous actually make some sense when they are read in context; they do not seem as infuriating as when they first appear in the alternative media. However, Ahmad Maslan’s moonlighting suggestion seems to be even more infuriating when read in context.

Umno dissident Khairuddin Abdul Rahman had the right rebuttals when doing some Ahmad bashing of his own in a Facebook posting. He argued that Malaysian workers must allocate time for their families and he blamed BN’s misgovernance for the hard times people were facing.

Industriousness is a valuable trait in the citizenry of any country, but it should be motivated by the belief that it’s commendable to be hardworking, and not by the need to make ends meet.

We all wonder whether Prime Minister Najib Razak is still concerned with his objective of making Malaysia a high-income nation by 2020, now that he has more pressing concerns on his mind, but what good is having a high income when it is achieved by having to spend most of one’s waking hours working to the point of neglecting one’s health and family? A stressed out, fatigued and sick population is only going to cost the government in hospital and medical bills, unless it plans to phase out state-provided health care.

Ahmad defended his suggestion by claiming that many people all over the world hold more than one job, but we have to ask which countries he was talking about.

If he was thinking of the United States, then he should know that the US, despite being an advanced country, has been grappling with the issue of income disparity for about a decade now. Police officers have to moonlight as security guards and many teachers are paid such low wages that they have to work second jobs as baristas or retail employees. All this comes on top of a job shortage for graduates who have to pay off their massive student loans.

We hope that Ahmad and BN are not thinking of taking us in that direction, not when there are many other developed countries that can be emulated in their legislation for fair wages, such as the Scandinavian countries.

Khairuddin is right in saying that the government has failed Malaysians. Surely, one of the main responsibilities of any government is to make sure that people are able to live comfortably. If Malaysians have to spend most of their waking hours working without time for leisure and recreation, that means the government has failed miserably.

But another context against which Ahmad’s exhortation can be read is that the need for Malaysians to work at more than one job is caused by the government’s incompetence, if not outright corruption. This would certainly make any citizen’s blood boil. Wages these days are barely sufficient for making ends meet due to the government’s tariff hikes, which are made necessary by it’s ballooning debt and misspending. Even if taking up a side job is the right answer, the people are still going to be angry, and rightfully so.

Imagine a pedestrian who has just been hit by a drunk driver at night being told by the offender, “Maybe you shouldn’t be walking outside at night.”