In my opinion, I don’t think the cut on subsidies really give positive impact but it is just worsen the daily life of every consumer. Why do I say like this? The people are going to get more burdens when the most important thing in daily life increased as diesel fuel is used for almost everything. We may just imagine the influences of increasing of fuel as all things like groceries, food, services, and others will also increase as they need transport.
The decreasing of subsidies is not really for the development of country such as facilities and building but based on statement had been reported by minister in the prime minister department, Datuk Idris Jala, Malaysia will bankrupt in the next nine year, 2019 if government do not cut the subsidies and depend on the loan. In addition, the debt of Malaysia will increase until 100% from Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2019 rather than 54% nowadays. This shows that the cut of subsidies is not for the development, but it is used to pay the debt that have been done by the government. The government would prefer to pay APCO Worldwide Sdn Bhd which is Israel’s company for RM 76.8 million per year to increase the image of Malaysia and the prime minister and this statement had been admitted by the minister in Prime Minister Department, Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz in Malaysia Today. Don’t you ever think it is such a waste to the Malaysians with expensive cost since there are local companies that may give the same service with lower price but why should we support Israel that kill a lot of our innocent friends in Palestin?
We always compare our fuel price with Thailand, Singapore and Philippines which they have lower rank in world oil producer with Thailand at 33th, Singapore at 86th, and Philippines at 70th. We are at 26th in the world oil produce which is much better than them. In Saudi Arabia, their price is RM 0.51 per liter which is very cheap but if we think they are the biggest oil producer, why don’t we compare to countries that are same level with us like Egypt which at 27th, below us. Egypt price oil is RM 0.98 per liter and this is much much lower than us and we should take them as example on how they develop their country, how they handle the oil crisis and we should not just granted that subsidies is cut for development or affected by oil crisis. We should ask why other country may handle this problem and not us. In addition, recently, one of the members of parliament asked for the record of money, RM 592 BILLION that have been given by PETRONAS to the government since 1974. It’s not a political issue but we have the right to know how the money have been used and we can see it’s very large money as RM 592 BILLION, not RM 592 million that can use for subsidies and development of country since RM 74 BILLION was given in 2009.
The subsidies which are told to give the minimal impact and not really burden the low-income families are totally wrong. As we can see, there are still a lot of people who are still getting income from the work that have low income such as farming which just produce less than a thousand. People may say our country is going to the high income salary for every person, but don’t we realize that there are many persons who are still work by themselves, with a lot of people don’t work. There will make them really affected and may cause the increase of crimes as they desperate to get money for their daily. We may see our crime statistic is increasing highly and government should take steps to prevent it and not worsen the situation. The ministers in government should show the good example before asking people to save money and not finish the Malaysians’ money by spending much money for wasting things such a big event that may cause high cost. We may look how the great leader such as Saidina Ali is saving money before asking his people to saving for long drought. If government really wanted to increase the quality of country, why the subsidies are reduced but the incomes for government workers are not going up. This is a big issue since people are going to suffer day by day even with a small cut on subsidies that will increase their budget with a small income.
*this is just an opinion from the writer which does not really to support any side
THANK YOU
Pengemis Dunia