Six reasons why you should avoid bottled water

 Corporate agenda, Development issues, Environment, United States  2 Responses »
Aug 062007
 

Often, many of us think nothing about drinking bottled water. But here’s why you should avoid it, whenever you can: Expensive: Litre for litre, it is thousands of times more expensive than tap water. Hardly hi-tech: Processes such as reverse osmosis aren’t exactly state of the art. Bottled water isn’t much safer than what you could obtain by running tap water through a simple water filter. Processed tap water: In fact, in many cases, bottled water is actually obtained from public water sources a.k.a. tap water (See report below). Diverted from communities: In some cases, water is diverted from local communities and sent for bottling. This reduces the level of groundwater in those areas and it becomes critical especially in places where water is scarce. Environmental headache: The disposal of water bottles, which are not meant for long-term use, is a major environmental headache. Same taste: In the United States, [Read more]

NCER: Who benefits more – Sime Darby or farmers?

 Agrobusiness/GM food, Corporate agenda, Development issues, Malaysian finance/business, Marginalised groups, Poverty  1 Response »
Jul 302007
 

Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi has launched the Northern Corridor Economic Region (NCER) masterplan. The masterplan was designed by Sime Darby although the project will be implemented by a regional coordinating authority. But Sime Darby is not a disinterested party. It is eyeing the seed market and planning to produce patented “mother seed” for 10 popular crops, which it wants to sell, along with fertilisers, to the farmers. Not only that, it will buy the farmers’ produce, process it and market it via Tesco (in which Sime Darby has a 30 per cent stake). When I contacted Jeyakumar Devaraj for comment, he told me, “It boggles the imagination that the government has come to the stage of contracting out the planning for poverty alleviation to a corporation whose primary aim is to maximise profits for shareholders.” He said that smaller farmers could end up being pushed out or turned into agricultural [Read more]

How The Star watered down my water article

 Corporate agenda, Development issues, Human rights, Media, Neo-liberal economics  6 Responses »
Jul 262007
 

When I was invited by The Star to write a piece on water in June, I hesitated. Knowing how steeped The Star was in promoting corporate interests, I wondered whether the article I would write would emerge unscathed (without cuts). My concerns were not unfounded. When I submitted my completed article, the first thing The Star editor asked me was whether he could drop the bit about YTL Corp. No reason given. I was dumbfounded. What I had said about YTL was public knowledge and had even been reported in the business press. I was disappointed but reluctantly agreed, as I thought three lines wouldn’t make much difference to the overall thrust and tone of my article. In fact, it wasn’t the most critical of articles; it was rather tame, I thought. Still, I wanted to get the message across that corporations were attempting to profit from water and that [Read more]

Minimum wage more effective than NEP equity targets

 Corporate agenda, Development issues, Malaysian finance/business, Marginalised groups, Neo-liberal economics, Poverty, Workers' rights  No Responses »
Jul 232007
 

As we all know, the two main prongs of the New Economic Policy are to wipe out poverty across the board and to restructure society so that no one ethnic group is stereotyped with a particular occupation – which in effect largely meant lifting the bumiputera community above the poverty line and into the ranks of the middle class. Now, wouldn’t it be great if there was a policy measure that could kill both these “birds” with one stone? Well, there is – but it is the one measure that the government is loathe to introduce and has dismissed out of hand. It is a minimum wage for all workers. A minimum wage would do wonders to reduce the poverty rate. Low-income workers would have to be paid wages that are above the poverty line. In fact, a minimum wage would be a far more effective tool in redistributing income [Read more]

Hidden world of clinical trials in Malaysia

 Corporate agenda, Development issues, Malaysian finance/business  No Responses »
Jul 132007
 

Some years ago, I read a John Le Carre novel, The Constant Gardener, later turned into a motion picture, about the intrigue surrounding a multinational company conducting clinical trials on unsuspecting Africans who were used as guinea pigs to test a remedy for tuberculosis. In the Afterword to his book, Le Carre observed: “As my journey through the pharmaceutical jungle progressed, I came to realise that, by comparison with the reality, my story was as tame as a holiday postcard.” But that was not why I wrote this piece (below) on clinical trials in Malaysia though Le Carre’s story has remained in the deeper recesses of my mind. What prompted me though was a pamphlet from InvestPenang, the Penang state government’s investment arm, which slipped into my hands. The pamphlet was obviously not intended for ordinary Malaysians like you and me. From the language used, it was clear that the [Read more]

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