Cost cutting???

While it is to be lauded that the Government is introducing cost cutting measures starting tomorrow, purportedly to mitigate the effects of price hikes, It is difficult for the poorer segment of the public to appreciate and understand how, downgrading a Jusa official to travel from Business Class to Economy will help the man in the street to deal with his diminishing ability to make ends meet.

However, a word of appreciation of the Government's cognizance of the need for everyone to inculcate the thrift habit is due. In addition to the 11 cost cutting measure to be implemented in 2014, I would suggest that the Government also consider the wasteful habit of making specially themed uniforms for officials to attend seminars, conferences, school openings, or even agricultural events. Why should it be essential for Ministers and their accompanying cohorts, and ALL those participating,  to wear apparel that can be only worn for that special occasion? Why can't the standard official wear like coat and tie, baju Melayu, or batik be worn? To me, this is such an ostentatious extravagance, and shows a lack of humility among us, besides wasting a lot of money.

Do away with uniforms for functions

Financial shenanigans

It would be interesting if Bank Negara and the Securities Commission can comment on this case, namely,

• how the bank giving out such a big loan deal with the unpaid loan of $83million, not including interest
• Can the employer of the clerk 'abscond' with such ease?
• Did the bank officials 'knowingly' allow such a 'loose' arrangement when dishing out such a big sum
• OMG! RM83 million! Will that bank be bailed out later, when global financial collapse happens, in the not too distant future,
• Is this a case for Anti corruption, although, they appear to be clueless?

Tam Yeng Siang

11 seconds ago via The Star Online

• Quote1 " The 56-year-old mother of four was embroiled in a financial nightmare when her employer registered her as a director of one of his companies and took large loans without her knowledge. The employer then absconded with the money"
  
  Quote2 " PPIM’s financial services monitoring bureau chief Sheikh Abdul Kareem Said Khadaied, questioned how such a huge loan was handed out by the bank when the guarantor was only a clerk. “Doesn’t Bank Negara Malaysia monitor these things closely? “A police report was filed against the directors but no action has been taken.
  
  Comment.. Who is the employer who "absconded"? How did the bank deal with such a big unpaid loan? Was the bank directors "stupid", or was there collusion between the bank directors and the 'employer who "absconded"'?

  

  Former clerk freed of RM83mil 'debt'

  fw.to

  KUALA LUMPUR: Radziah Hussein can finally obtain a credit card after nearly 12 years of protesting her alleged bankruptcy after she was said to have “defaulted” on a whopping RM83mil loan.

Financial shenanigans

MPs urge Govt to postpone toll hike

Reading this report in The Star, MPs urge Govt to postpone toll hike, and similar reports in other mainstream papers today, I would like to put into proper perspective why the public have felt so strongly that toll rates must be held or reduced, rather than increased. Not withstanding the fact that contracts have been signed with the concessionaires, have the Government and the politicians ever considered that those contracts may have not been signed at "arms length" and may have been flawed, thus putting the taxpayer's money at a great disadvantage? If those concession companies which are in turn, owned by GLCs, is there no way negotiations can be made with them to accept more Corporate Social Responsibility and Morality in their business missions, rather than to hold on to the adage that "profit matters"?

It is also not entirely unjustified that the rakyat has clamoured for status quo in the toll rates. Why do I say this.

In 2009, I posted in my blog and also wrote to the mainstream papers my experience with the toll operations in a foreign country {let's call it B} which signed a toll operations agreement with a blue chip Malaysian company called A. (Reason to reduce tolls, a factual story) Please allow me to quote from the column..

" Let me tell a factual story and put things in perspective. In 1996, one of the largest infrastructure construction and toll operations company in Malaysia, which I will call 'A', entered into a joint venture agreement overseas, with the government of an South East Asian country, which shall be 'B', to rehabilitate an existing segment of a highway, and to also construct new segments through one of the busiest sections of the country. Government B was responsible for the acquisition of land for the road, called the right of way(ROW), and Company A will bear all the construction costs, provide the systems and also training for the operations and maintenance of the completed highways. The joint venture agreement (JVA) signed between A and B, among other things, stipulated the Revenue Sharing arrangements. The JVA stipulated that until the construction costs, finance charges and interest have been FULLY recouped by Company A, the toll revenue (nett of operations costs) shall be shared in the ratio of 90:10 to A and B respectively. However, when those costs including loans, finance charges and interest have been fully recovered by A, the revenue (nett of operations costs) shall be shared in the ratio of 40:60 between A and B respectively. Unfortunately company A eventually disposed off the business to a local Investor, as Govt B could not raise the funds to acquire the ROW for continuation of the project.

Now what does the story tell us? It shows us undeniably that there is a need for concession companies in Malaysia to re-visit the toll rate, once they have collected sufficient revenue to repay their loans and other finance costs. It is then clearly immoral for these concession companies to continue raising toll fares, AND for the Government to approve it under those agreements. The fact that Company A in my story can agree to take a 50% less revenue in Country B after recovering their Finance costs shows that there is no need for such high toll fees, after the completion of construction of the expressways. It is not surprising then that the former UEM employees, in proposing to buy over PLUS, has also proposed to cut the toll rate by 20%.!!

 

In my opinion, democratic capitalist systems do not always work to the benefit of the rakyat, and a Government which sincerely professes to have the citizens in its heart should temper its decisions and minimize their suffering. I for one, do not believe that the Government and most of the owners of the toll concession companies, who are 'on the same side of the fence' cannot come to an agreement to re-visit those onerous toll contracts, and renegotiate for more equitable ones.

Shoving such toll rate increases down the throat of the long suffering rakyat just because biased contracts have been signed, can only be seen to have a sinister motive.

I hope, in my twilight years, I can see some sense prevail in our politicians, who for once take the needs of the rakyat above their own. I also hope that the Government that we have now is a caring one.

Destruction of Hill slopes!

Hi Aunty Glamor,
Inevitably, your column is one which I have always homed in on, and Wasted years, wasted lives is no exception! Your column on slopes is timely too, as just 2 days' ago, I was agitated to read again the controversy on the Gasing Hill where apartments have been built ON TOP of the hill, on the KL side, where approval have been obtained haha! When Queried why build on such dangerous slopes by the Councillors, the answer was, "Approval given in 2008 lah" so can't be helped! You mean they have forgotten about Highland towers already? Or there is something so irresistible that approval HAS to be given?

As regards to the suggestion that maintenance funds be made available for old slopes, as in HK, better not. In Malaysia, these funds if made available, will be used to buy NEW MPVs, employ new drivers, design new uniforms to visit the sites of weak slopes, and everything but spending on the slope itself.

Otherwise, how come the roof of Serdang Hospital has collapsed at 'regular' intervals?

Carry on these columns Aunty, we live for them, Ahem!

Timely reminder on slope building

Gambling and Internet Cafes!

I refer to your report, Gambling using their PTPTN loans, in which was stated, " The gambling activities among the students are reported to be rampant due to an increase of gambling slot machines outlets near the students’ housing area in Taman Cempaka and Rokam in Ipoh..... A check found that at least five Internet cafes had hundreds of such machines. The two most famous machines were the Funky Monkey and the Kimochi....."

Throughout the years, we have read that the Police have made intermittent raids on such gambling joints masquerading as Internet Cafes, and according the the above report, without any significant success! The problem needs to be nipped at the bud, and to do so, we must now ask the questions to the Local Authorities. 

As far as I can remember, licences to operate the so-called Internet Cafes arose in the days when accessing the Internet was difficult and very limited. Internet cafes mushroomed to take advantage of the business opportunity of providing internet access to the masses at an affordable cost.

Today, the Internet is accessible to almost everyone with a phone, and data packages, free WiFi  are all over the place. Retirees and bored housewives think nothing of surfing the net while waiting for their spouses or grandchildren. Children as young as 5 years old can surf the world wide web, sometimes with deleterious consequences such as porn watching and illicit gambling activities.

So, do the Internet Cafes now serve their original purpose? In order to survive, they have mutated to become places that initially offered innocent Internet Games, but the inevitable has happened. The Internet Cafe is now seen as the place where the young and bored can get their dose of surreptitious gambling, to catastrophic effects!

The Local authorities need to revise its terms of operating such cafes, the first of which is to make such cares an OPEN environment where is operations are easily subject to public scrutiny. Why should the cafes be allowed to operate behind closed doors, in dimmed light conditions, and even with CCTV posted outside the premises, to warn of raids by the Police? Why should Internet Cafes hide themselves behind tinted glass fronts, which only allow people to look out, not in? Do the operators of such cafes post bonds or deposits to ensure they abide by the rules not to offer gambling terminals?

From my long term observation, it  would seem to me that the authorities are ''closing one eye" to this in return for revenue received annually from licensing. Licensing such an "ambiguous" business is also an area that can be open to lots of corruption.

Finally, I would like to describe the operations of a 'half shop' internet cafe in my Section. This shop appears to be shuttered all the time, as if it's vacant, but a CCTV mounted on the ceiling outside the shop monitors all entry and departures. Customers can be seen going in and out of the shuttered place, and even food is served from the Indian restaurant next door.! What seems to be ludicrous is that sometime back, there was even an "umbrella" police post stationed just 5 metres on the road opposite the shuttered place! Lastly, I am not even sure this 'Internet cafe' is licensed !!
 Dubious Internet Cafes getting away with it.

Undesirable consequences of too much cheap foreign labour!

I read this report in your paper, Riot breaks out in 'Little India' Singapore not without some trepidation. The continuous dependence of countries like Singapore and Malaysia on cheap foreign labour to fuel their development, has also brought in some negative consequences as I have already written previously. Besides the drain on our diminishing resources like housing and potable water, such cheap foreign labour inevitably introduce undesirable elements in their local environment into our civil society, one of them being their propensity to start violent protests for any reason, as shown in this reported incident.

I am writing this out of great concern that the foreigners who have arrived from the same country to Malaysia will watch this with avid interest, and as recent global events have proven, 'copycat' the acts, out of utter frustration and perhaps apparent alledged employer 'abuse'. Additionally, Malaysia have much greater numbers of foreign workers from the various countries in the Asia Pacific region {Nepal, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Philippines, Myanmar and Vietnam, to name a few}, and these foreigners come from places that are not averse to or are accustomed to violent responses to any social ills and injustices they perceive the local Government and/or employers had inflicted on them

I feel it is important for our Government to view the incident across the Johor Straits with serious concern, and consider the impacts that our rampant 'import' of about 5 million such low level foreign workers will have on our civill society in the very near future!

Don't say that we have not been forewarned

View Singapore riot incident seriously.. 

Salary hikes of politicians is morally indefensible

Everything Dr Chandra said in this letter is true, >Increase morally indefensible but there is nothing anyone can or is willing to do anything about! Capitalism means the eventual destruction of the world's finite resources to support the elites and enslaving the rest of the 90%...

Snippets from the letter :

• I WONDER why Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat leaders did not tell the voters during the 13th general election campaign that within six months of assuming power in various states they would increase substantially the salaries and allowances of state mentris besar and chief ministers, executive councillors and legislative assembly members.
• It is critical that we move away from the pronounced elite orientation in our economy and in other spheres and give greater emphasis to egalitarian policies which will empower the majority of the citizenry. It is partly because of this elite orientation that income and wealth disparities are so severe in today’s Malaysia.
• As a result of this disparity, the social chasm that separates the “have-a-lot” and the “have-a-little” has widened considerably creating a divided society. It is one of the serious impediments on the path of “1Malaysia”.
• In the United States, unfettered capitalism – the root cause of increasing inequalities – has created a situation where the “Walton family, heirs to the Walmart fortune, have accumulated more financial wealth than the entire bottom 40% of the United States.” This is why it is morally indefensible for legislators in Malaysia to grant themselves such hefty increments when such a big segment of society is struggling to make ends meet.
• They are merely lending credence to how an Indonesian political leader of the fifties, Syafrudin Perwiranegara, once caricatured one of Sukarno’s acronyms, USDEK – Untuk Saya Dahulu Engkau Kemudian.