Malaysia Today

The Malaysian government said we were spending almost 40 billion in fuel subsidy, in which just about equal our development budget for the year.
With our population at 26 million, this works out to rm1538.46 per Malaysian per year.
If this is distributed, that person who had 3 wives and going for the forth and had 18 children, would get a total of rm35,384.62 for his family, almost equal to his yearly salary of 36K per year. I don’t think he needs to work any more.

Jokes aside, where had all our billions gone to, was it used to improve our cost of production whereby foreign investors would find it attractive enough to invest here and multiply our billions of hard cash spent.
We are a net oil exporter and if foreign investors do not find us attractive enough, something must be very wrong somewhere.Our past policies must have been wrong and it is coming back to hound us.

I have to take our klang valley as an example, as it is the most industrialised part of our country. It cost quite a lot to stay in the klang valley of Malaysia, where most of the industries are and thus job opportunity.
The closer you can get to rent a residence, to your place of work, the higher is the rental and unfortunately such residences are also limited and fully occupied. The security is another problem.
After staying in the klang valley on and off for the past year, I have come to the conclusion that you need at least Rm900 per month now, just to stay there and move around. This does not include your other necessities. (This is beginning to sound something like a head count tax)

It seems everything goes in sync with each other, if you were to stay near a place where you work, the rent will be exorbitant and should you stay in another residential area away from the industrial area, you pay a high price for transportation or an unavoidable loss of time.
Thus my gut feeling is, you will have to spend that much if you are to stay alone and being a working person. This is beside the food that you have to consume and other necessities.
For a person to live decently in klang valley, he would need a job that pays at least rm1800 per month, anything less than that, he would be living like a rat in a rat hole.
I do not think, one would have much left over at the end of the month and he can forget about entertainment, just work like a slave.

So, can the Malaysian government bring down the cost of living in the industrialized area like klang valley, despite raising the cost of fuel?
Without a doubt, I think they can, if they are sincere in tackling this issue.
There had been so much abuse and conflict of interests in the past that it gives them a huge margin to adjust without burdening the Malaysians further.
There was desire to improve the public transport in 1996 after the fuel increment but as we could see, the desire was not to improve the mobility of the working people but for school children to school and housewives to do shopping.
The conflict of interest here, it seems, the government wanted the working class to have their owned form of transportation.
It wanted to see no end in the increasing sales of motorized vehicles.

It takes at least 4 changes in public transportation to get to your place of work on a single trip (return trip not included), if you are lucky and staying about 20 km from your place of work. This distance takes at least 2 hours in traveling and waiting time, on a single trip. Thus for a day, you spend 4 hours on a 8 hours working day just on transportation time. Don’t you think it is ridiculous?

The government had said that the fuel subsidy had reach a point where it almost equate the development budget for the year and thus the fuel price increased up to 40%.
It is only logical now, more important now than ever, to discourage vehicle ownership. The public transportation improvement should get the first priority.
Shaft those corridors, if you can convince at least 50% of the working class and industrial sector to used public transport, imagine the saving, it will be in billions and actually it will be self financing.
We do not know what the former transport and works ministers had been doing, to get us to such a mess but hey, this can be a blessing in disguise.
The present ministers can improve on this without straining the budget further.
If this is given the priority, our ministers should be talking and discussing about this, not the corridors, shaft those corridors for all I care!
We had been going down the wrong path for the past 25 years and it is about time we make the right turn.