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S’pore match makers blasted for displaying Vietnamese women

Vietnamese living in Singapore as well as local media have strongly criticized match maker services that exhibit Vietnamese women as potential brides at trade fair booths.
An article by Patricia Yap, which was published in Singapore’s Newstoday March 14, described how Vietnamese women were ‘put on display’ like a product at a trade fair booth at the Golden Mile Complex trading center in Singapore.

“It was like a TV advertisement and it was so humiliating” said Toan, a Vietnamese working at a computer firm in Singapore.

“In fact, Vietnamese women were put on display at not only the Golden Mile Complex, but other places like the Fulushou Complex and Orchard Point trading centers” said Quynh Mai, who runs a hotel business in Singapore.

Mai said the Singaporean men had to pay thousands of dollars to match makers to marry a Vietnamese woman, but the woman’s family at home would receive only several hundred of dollars at the most.

In addition, Vietnamese women were not happy when married to a Singaporean man, she said. “Singaporean men consider Vietnamese wives homemakers,” said Mai.

“It is so sad that our women are being disregarded here,” she said, adding that the local Chinese media had also discussed this issue.

“I do not agree with this matchmaking,” said Surianto, an Indonesian friend of Toan. “No one can ensure that the man will treat his wife well after paying money to buy her,” he said. “This is just buying and selling between them, not love.”

Singaporean men’s needs

The article Looking abroad for a spouse published on the local Sunday Star Sept. 24, 2002 warned of the growing trend of Singaporean men heading to foreign countries like Thailand, Indonesia, China, India or Vietnam to find wives.

The article said Singaporean women nowadays were so pampered by their parents that they did not know how to deal with housework, and more seriously, they did not want to get married.

Meanwhile, many young Singaporean men with low incomes and superficial educations could not find a local woman to marry, thus, had to marry foreign women, the article said.

The article also told the story of a 62-year-old Singaporean man who married a 21-year-old Vietnamese girl. “Vietnamese girls are more truthful than Singaporean women, and they have less material demands,” the article quoted the man, Ho Park Tong, as saying.

Collected by Nguyen Dinh Quang -T1 00-03
Submitted by Thuy Tran - 03-06
Source : http://www.thanhniennews.com/overseas/?catid=12&newsid=5676