Cursing the fuel & fuelling the curse
(1)
It has been a week since the fuel price hike last Wednesday. On the day the price hike was announced, I spent five hours in my car, not to refill, but simply to reach home from work, and lost half tank of my fuel. The day was undoubtedly a cursing fest for many motorists.
From government’s point of view, the hike is about reducing exhorbitant subsidies on fuel. It costs a whopping RM 56 billion to cover the fuel subsidies, an amount the government can ill afford to continue paying.
If we are evaluating this issue from the government subsidies issue per se, Pak Lah and Shahrir Samad would have won the battle. It could be the correct thing to do. In general, fuel subsidies are bad for national economy in a long run and it could not be sustained in a prolonged way. Moreover, lives that run based on carbon fuel economy would destroy our planet much faster.
But, when we look from the fact that our people’s dependency on fuel is a direct accumulated results of our government policies over the past decades, the decision to remove the fuel subsidies is nothing else but injustice. It is more like putting our people on drug until they got heavily addicted to it before raising the price of that drug.
Owning and driving private vehicles has never been optional for most of our citizens, be they working class, businessmen, students or even homemakers. As a car producing nation, we have been encouraged to support the very industry that has become national project under direct supervision from none other than the PM himself.
Also, the investment on tolled highways had been equally mammoth. Who would have financed all these highways if not from private vehicle owners. Had public transportation been successful, I wonder whether or not the highway concessioners would remain in business. One may ask, could the failure of our public transports be deliberated and purposeful on the part of our government?
Even banks and financial institutions were ask to provide incentives to spur the growth of our auto industries. Not to mention the high number of APs issued by our government in the name of supporting certain segments of auto industries.
So we say no thanks to poorly planned and unreliable public transportation system. Also, no thanks to our skewed urban planning. People simply have to drive to accomplish almost everything related to their lives. Recent survey found less than 20% of our population use public transportation. With this figure, I think it is a sin even to think about raising fuel price.
I would support removing fuel subsidies had our government freed our people from this addiction on fuel consumption beforehand. Subsidy is more like a panadol to provide temporarily relief in difficult time. It must be timely, but not prolonged.
(2)
Petronas is the richest single entity owned by our nation. But, does it really belong to the people of our nation?
It has been asked…again and again…where does the Petronas money being spent? And has it been spent prudently? There has been no satisfactory answer to this yet so far.
Some of us are arguing, instead of putting Petronas money on wasteful mega projects, it would be better off being used to subsidize fuel price. Thus, the founding issue is not really about subsidy, but more on transparency and accountability.
Transparency and accountability are the two critical areas Petronas has failed us, Malaysians. The Petroleum Development Act 1974 gives Petronas exclusive rights to manage our rich oil resources. We certainly could not afford to allow Petronas to fail us on these two critical aspects in managing our nation’s wealth. It would only be proper had our government declared opening Petronas coffers to public scrutiny prior to announcing any reduction in fuel subsidy.
If Petronas refuses to take responsibility to protect our citizens from soaring world’s fuel price, it must then be disbanded for failing to deliver its basic objective of its very own formation.
(3)
I did not watch Salahuddin Ayub vs Sharir Samad on TV1 last Tuesday night. I heard from friends, Salahuddin fared poorly in the discussion mainly because he gave too much attention to Petronas profit and the need for fuel subsidy.
I think it was a mistake on his part. He should have focused more on social justice, transparency and accountability even when discussing fuel price hike. The fact is, not one of our citizens needs subsidy had our nation’s wealth be spent prudently, fairly, transparently and with full of accountability. Our richness is so abundance, enough for everyone to live decently.
No minister in our cabinet line up could stand tall when faced with questions of social justice, transparency, and accountability.
Salahuddin should have played his cards within this nutshell.
It has been a week since the fuel price hike last Wednesday. On the day the price hike was announced, I spent five hours in my car, not to refill, but simply to reach home from work, and lost half tank of my fuel. The day was undoubtedly a cursing fest for many motorists.
From government’s point of view, the hike is about reducing exhorbitant subsidies on fuel. It costs a whopping RM 56 billion to cover the fuel subsidies, an amount the government can ill afford to continue paying.
If we are evaluating this issue from the government subsidies issue per se, Pak Lah and Shahrir Samad would have won the battle. It could be the correct thing to do. In general, fuel subsidies are bad for national economy in a long run and it could not be sustained in a prolonged way. Moreover, lives that run based on carbon fuel economy would destroy our planet much faster.
But, when we look from the fact that our people’s dependency on fuel is a direct accumulated results of our government policies over the past decades, the decision to remove the fuel subsidies is nothing else but injustice. It is more like putting our people on drug until they got heavily addicted to it before raising the price of that drug.
Owning and driving private vehicles has never been optional for most of our citizens, be they working class, businessmen, students or even homemakers. As a car producing nation, we have been encouraged to support the very industry that has become national project under direct supervision from none other than the PM himself.
Also, the investment on tolled highways had been equally mammoth. Who would have financed all these highways if not from private vehicle owners. Had public transportation been successful, I wonder whether or not the highway concessioners would remain in business. One may ask, could the failure of our public transports be deliberated and purposeful on the part of our government?
Even banks and financial institutions were ask to provide incentives to spur the growth of our auto industries. Not to mention the high number of APs issued by our government in the name of supporting certain segments of auto industries.
So we say no thanks to poorly planned and unreliable public transportation system. Also, no thanks to our skewed urban planning. People simply have to drive to accomplish almost everything related to their lives. Recent survey found less than 20% of our population use public transportation. With this figure, I think it is a sin even to think about raising fuel price.
I would support removing fuel subsidies had our government freed our people from this addiction on fuel consumption beforehand. Subsidy is more like a panadol to provide temporarily relief in difficult time. It must be timely, but not prolonged.
(2)
Petronas is the richest single entity owned by our nation. But, does it really belong to the people of our nation?
It has been asked…again and again…where does the Petronas money being spent? And has it been spent prudently? There has been no satisfactory answer to this yet so far.
Some of us are arguing, instead of putting Petronas money on wasteful mega projects, it would be better off being used to subsidize fuel price. Thus, the founding issue is not really about subsidy, but more on transparency and accountability.
Transparency and accountability are the two critical areas Petronas has failed us, Malaysians. The Petroleum Development Act 1974 gives Petronas exclusive rights to manage our rich oil resources. We certainly could not afford to allow Petronas to fail us on these two critical aspects in managing our nation’s wealth. It would only be proper had our government declared opening Petronas coffers to public scrutiny prior to announcing any reduction in fuel subsidy.
If Petronas refuses to take responsibility to protect our citizens from soaring world’s fuel price, it must then be disbanded for failing to deliver its basic objective of its very own formation.
(3)
I did not watch Salahuddin Ayub vs Sharir Samad on TV1 last Tuesday night. I heard from friends, Salahuddin fared poorly in the discussion mainly because he gave too much attention to Petronas profit and the need for fuel subsidy.
I think it was a mistake on his part. He should have focused more on social justice, transparency and accountability even when discussing fuel price hike. The fact is, not one of our citizens needs subsidy had our nation’s wealth be spent prudently, fairly, transparently and with full of accountability. Our richness is so abundance, enough for everyone to live decently.
No minister in our cabinet line up could stand tall when faced with questions of social justice, transparency, and accountability.
Salahuddin should have played his cards within this nutshell.
posted by Jamna at
10:02 AM
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