Loansharks and the borrowers!

For the first topic in this blog, i shall talk about the article mentioned in the straits times on the 13 January. It mentioned that there was a proposal of the idea that to try to stop the loansharks and the borrowing of money, the idea of counting the people who borrow the money as criminals was brought up. There was some who agreed to this and while others did not. What do you think?

For me i find that this idea is unfair to the borrowers and should not be taken into consideration. Why? First i feel that we ought to put ourselves in the shoes of the borrowers. People know full well that loansharks are bad, especially from the bad image created by the press and media, where loansharks kill, set houses on fire to those who dont pay up. However, people will still end up borrowing money because they are desperate, they have no one else to turn to but the loan sharks and can only put up with the killing interest rate.

At this point you would think, why not just ask bank for loan? Well it would be a pretty naive thinking that banks just give loans out like water. Banks will give loans to people who they are very confident will pay back. But if the person's future or past didnt look all that bright, theres a good chance that the bank wouldnt give a loan. Also it might not be the person's fault that he/she is in dire need of money. It could have been for the sake of a family member who had gone haywire, but still very important to he/she.

One scenario could be, a pretty poor family were getting along just fine. They had stable jobs, their kids were studying, getting average results, basically your average joe family. However, what if a kid just made one mistake and landed himself a debt and did not have the financial means for it. Naturally the parents would still want to save him, since he is their flesh and blood.
However, what if the bank was not willing to give them a loan? Who could they turn to? Loan-sharks. This is because loan-sharks operate much simpler. They give you the money, charge you the interest, you pay back the money, everything is good. The only problem would be if the payment was not fast enough.

So from this i thus feel that we should make it harder for loan-sharks by tracking them down etc. ( singapore police is good of course ^^) Whereas the government could help the families who are in unfortunate situations more, preventing the families from turning to loan sharks. In this way, business will go downhill and loansharks hopefully will be discouraged from going on any further!

P.S. Please comment ^^