Yuen: From teacher to top cop
IPOH: It is rare for someone to switch job from a teacher to become a top police officer – more so fighting the communists.
The late Tan Sri Yuen Yuet Leng, 88, did that, but not before another police officer, Datuk R. Thambipillay, coaxed him to join the force.
It was a right move and saw the workaholic Yuen, a dedicated and committed officer, who ensured he finished the job entrusted to him at all cost.
Thambipillay, a former Ipoh City deputy police chief (crime), said: "There was no way of us being put off the task ... we must do it there and then."
He once told me: "Pillay I will kick you and you kick your officers."
Thambipillay described Yuen as a man who always had the welfare of the people and the nation at heart.
"My first contact with him was when I was serving at the Gemas district police headquarters and he was a trainee teacher in 1949," he told theSun today.
Yuen together with other teachers would travel to Seremban for teacher training courses and come back to Gemas to teach.
"As they would return around midnight the teachers will approach me for curfew passes.
"This was when I suggested that he join the force and Yuen was very keen to become a policeman and later served most of his life in the Special Branch," Thambipillay said.
"In 1972 while serving in Rajang Area Secuitry Command (RASCOM) in Sarawak, he suggested to me that the authorities implement the 'Danger Belt Scheme' in Sibu which was a hotbed for communists.
RASCOM was established to fight the communist terrorists.
The scheme involved cutting a path across a rubber estate so that the people would not go beyond the zone as well as making it difficult for communists to approach the villagers for information and food.
According to Thambipillay, it was a success as the scheme managed to counter distribution of pamphlets by communists.
Yuen's commitment led to threats on his life.
"Yuen carried a bullet in his body after he was shot by communists in an ambush in Sungai Siput as doctors advised him not to remove it," Thambipillay said.
"His services cannot be forgotten and will always be remembered ... my condolences to his family."