If a by-election is held in Titi Tinggi, it could turn out to be a referendum on unpopular neo-liberal policies such as the regressive Goods and Services Tax (GST) and the Full-Paying Patients (FPP) scheme.
The MCA’s Yip Sun Onn has resigned from his seat in the Perlis State Assembly just days after Indera Kayangan assembly member and Kangar MCA chairman Dr Por Cho Chor replaced him in the Perlis state government exco line-up on 19 March. Utusan reported yesterday that the “replacement was made by the state government as a normal practice upon the request of the MCA leadership itself”.
The GST has been shelved for the time being – but it could be resurrected later. At the same time, plans are afoot to extend the Full-Paying Patients (FPP) pilot scheme to other general hospitals.
For over 120 years, the Penang Botanic Garden has managed perfectly well without these concrete structures.
But now, in the name of ‘development’, ‘progress’ and ‘upgrading’, concrete is being dumped in the Garden and useless structures are sprouting up. (The slideshow above includes photos of the horrendous new arches at the Garden entrance and of the administration block being built near Moon Gate.)
If you haven’t, it is time you got acquainted with the man: Aneurin Bevan was the Minister of Health in post-war Britain who played a key role in setting up the National Health Service. Aneurin Bevan - Photo courtesy of Wikipedia
It was Bevan who uttered these immortal words: “The collective principle asserts that… no society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means.”
Which means health care is not a commodity but a basic right that should be made available and accessible to all. It also means we need a top-class public health care system with adequate funding. That was what the speakers at a Sembang-Sembang talk this afternoon, Dr Jeyakumar and Dr Jayabalan, stressed.
Many among the audience at the Caring Society Complex in Penang were moved when they heard a woman, Roszita, describing how she lost her husband, Ahmad Nazri, 49, a heart patient, because the couple were unable to raise RM19,000 in time to buy three stents that were needed to deal with blockages.
Political parties in Malaysia can learn a thing or two from Parti Sosialis Malaysia: the party has made it a point for their two elected reps and three councillors to disclose their assets and income to the public every year.Declaring their assets at the Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall – Photo courtesy of PSM
Their asset disclosures are each accompanied by an annual performance report.
You can see the asset disclosures here. Even so, the format could be improved to include disclosures of the assets belonging to immediate family members and comparative figures for the previous year to indicate if there has been any significant increase.
The 5km-Jelutong Expressway still poses a couple a niggling questions.
This RM 700m expressway, orginally estimated to cost RM300m, later rising to RM370m or more, was supposedly built “free of charge” – with no toll imposed on motorists – under a privatisation exercise mooted in 1997.
But at what cost to Penang?
The valuable rights to the reclamation of close to 300 acres 325 acres of prime sea-front land, in addition to existing land – making a total of some 330 355 acres, later apparently increased to 368 acres – were handed over to IJM in return for the ‘free’ highway.
And, for good measure, a loan was reportedly given – was it RM33 million? How thoughtful.
More on the Penang International Convention Centre.Tan Seng Hai, the person spearheading a petition expressing concern about the PICC, sent the following letter to The Star – but it apparently has not been published.
I refer to the report “Council will announce successful bidder of PICC, says CM” (Sunday Star, 14 March 2010) in which Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng was quoted as saying critics of the PICC have their “own political motives and agenda behind their criticisms”.
I do not belong to any political party and have no affiliation to any organisations. I initiated the on-line petition against building the PICC on my own initiative out of love for Penang and in the hope that the Penang State Government will do the right thing and do it right.
Some 2,000 Orang Asli have protested today in Putrajaya while 12,000 have signed a memorandum.
It’s all to do with the government’s proposed Orang Asli land policy, which one analyst has decribed as a recipe for planned poverty.
All parties contributed to the collapse of the roof of the RM270 million Kuala Terengganu stadium last June – but no single party was found to be totally responsible.
Or at least that’s what the official investigation report on the collapse says.
The principal architect, Raja Kamarul Bahrin Shah Raja Ahmad of Senibahri Architect, was reported as saying he was never involved in the detailed structural design or supervision of the stadium’s roof: he claims the main contractor had got another consultant to work on a detailed design of the roof. According to him, his engineers had expressed their concern on four occasions to the PWD over the flaws they discovered in the structure.
A notice has been issued to the contractor to repair the 50,000-seat Sultan Mizan Zainal Abidin Stadium – the biggest in the East Coast – but no response so far.
So if no single party is totally responsible, where does the buck stop and who will bear the penalties for this sheer waste of public funds (probably derived from the state’s oil royalties – or whatever you call them)?
Meanwhile, the Terengganu government is unable to say if the stadium is safe even after the debris from the 2,500-tonne roof has been cleared as the impact of the collapse is not known.
Did you know that swiftlet breeders, eyeing the lucrative edible nests market, have taken over 8.3 per cent of some 3,500 pre-war buildings in George Town?Photos show the interior of a converted house, the installation of a compressor and the bricked up windows at the rear of the building
One concerned George Town resident expresses alarm. This letter was sent to The Star in response to a report but was not published:
I read with interest the article ‘Swiftly growing’ and what Association of Swiftlet Nest Industry(ASNI) president, Carole Loh, had to say about swiftlet farming. It is a very lucrative business indeed but I strongly believe it is best suited to areas where the birds naturally feed, over agricultural or forest areas, or in combination with agriculture, in areas of low population. Ms Loh is totally correct when she says that it is a risky business with an 80 per cent failure rate but the business is becoming much more about technique (than she says) to attract the birds in the first place. There are really no secrets anymore. All the information you need to start a brand new swiftlet breeding house is readily available on the internet, as are the tapes and tunes needed to attract or detract the birds to/from your artificial cave.
It’s not surprising that the government has decided to put off the Goods and Services Tax (GST) for now.
While the NGOs might claim preliminary victory (they had planned a protest for Monday, when Parliament resumes) and some might think that the government has listened to the people’s concern, I believe it was the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturer’s objection that probably saved the day.
Five days ago on Tuesday, the FMM’s task force on GST recommended that the tax be deferred until Malaysia was ready (when average income was higher and income disparity lower).
We shouldn’t be too thankful to the FMM though. They very “kindly” suggested that the government consider a Retail Sales Tax instead of a GST – while the corporations continue to enjoy ever-lower tax rates. Gee, thanks!
Who says you need not worry about democracy when investing in a country.
You would probably be bananas if you think that your investments would be safe in an undemocratic country.
These can’t be the smartest of Malaysians to invest in a banana firm in Zimbabwe, ruled by the autocratic Mugabe, that good friend of Mahathir’s.
Interesting developments at Pharmaniaga Bhd, which through a subsidiary was awarded a lucrative concession to manufacture, purchase, store and distribute pharmaceutical and medical products to government hospitals.
The concession to privatise the Government Medical Store was originally awarded in 1994 to a subsidiary of United Engineers (M) Bhd known as Remedi Pharmaceuticals (M) Sdn Bhd. Medicine prices soared after the privatisation.
Remedi became a subsidiary of Pharmaniaga Berhad in 1999 and was then known as Pharmaniaga Logistics Sdn Bhd.
Last December, Pharmaniaga Bhd revealed that the Public Private Partnership Unit of the Prime Minister’s Department had awarded Pharmaniaga Logistics Sdn Bhd a 10-year extension on its concession. The Privatisation Committee of the PPP Unit would negotiate the new terms and conditions of the privatisation concesion and then propose the outcome to the government for further consideration.
On 3 March 2010, however, the firm dropped a bombshell when it revealed that the Pharmaceutical Services Division of the Health Ministry, following a routine audit, had revoked the manufacturing licence of Pharmaniaga Manufacturing Berhad effective 1 March 2010.
This is something I wrote in the wake of the defections from PKR of late:
The defections of PKR elected reps are a blow for democracy in Malaysia, but in the long-run they will provide timely lessons for all concerned.
At the last general election, many Malaysians chose to express their disgust with the BN over pervasive corruption, human rights abuses, economic hardship and the politics of divide-and-rule.
No doubt people voted for the party rather than the person, based on certain principles.
By the time the ceramah ended, the crowd at the site had swelled to 20,000.
2225: A crowd of 10,000 is now listening to a speech by PKR secretary general Saifuddin Nasution at a Pakatan ceramah at the Seberang Jaya expo site on mainland Penang, according to a veteran journalist at the scene.
The magistrate hearing a case involving a dozen reformists who protested in 2000 at restrictions imposed on Harakah has acquitted all the accused.Free at last – Photo via Tian Chua
The reformasi supporters had protested against a restriction slashing the frequency of the Pas newspaper from twice weekly to once a fortnight.
Of the 12 charged, one had already passed away.
The DDP had subpoenaed 11 witnesses but only two witnesses testified with no response from the rest, said Tian Chua.
The inquest into the death of Teoh Beng Hock resumes today as the Sungei Buloh Hospital’s head of Forensics Dr Shahidan is cross examined by MACC counsel Abdul Razak Musa.
Have you been to the market recently and scratched your heads at the rising prices of vegetables and fruit. What do you do?
Vegetable and fruit prices have almost doubled over the last six months or so. And there is nothing to suggest that it won’t rise even further.
At one time, we had quite a few vegetable farms in Penang. Now most of our vegetables and fruit have to be brought in from Camerons, Australia, China and the United States.
This is not an ideal situation on three counts:
Transporting food from great distances increases the carbon foot-print of these items.
We become more dependent on external sources for our food, i.e. we move away from self-sufficiency and food security. What happens when these places don’t have enough to supply us? Prices will rocket, as we are gradually finding out now.
We get hooked on the pesticide/chemical model of agrobusiness. By right each state in Malaysia should be looking into what it can do to promote self-sufficiency in organic food. Perhaps we could become a hub for organic food in the region.
Now along comes an initiative to show what ordinary people like you and me can do.
How do excessive federal powers affect Penang and other states in Malaysia?
To understand some of the constraints that state governments, especially Pakatan-ruled states, are operating under, check out this report in theSun on the Penang Forum.
NGOs alarmed at excessive federal govt powers
Himanshu Bhatt
GEORGE TOWN (March 7, 2010): The impact of widespread federalism, or entrenched federal government powers in state affairs, is a serious concern that needs to be looked into, a forum to assess the Pakatan Rakyat’s two-year rule in Penang heard today.
Several NGO activists expressed concern over various matters in which the federal government exercised undue control, leaving the state authorities out of important local matters they should be handling.
What do visitors to Penang and Penangites themselves think of the place? Are we building more malls and high-rise luxury condo blocks than we need?
What about affordable housing?
Look at what has happened to Midlands One-Stop Centre, once a popular shopping draw. What is its occupancy rate now? It looks more than half empty now – many of the shoplots are shuttered down -as shoppers make a beeline to the newer, flashier malls.
Have a look at these two letters to the press:
Declaring their assets at the Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall – Photo courtesy of PSM
Their asset disclosures are each accompanied by an annual performance report.
You can see the asset disclosures here. Even so, the format could be improved to include disclosures of the assets belonging to immediate family members and comparative figures for the previous year to indicate if there has been any significant increase.
Free at last – Photo via Tian Chua
The reformasi supporters had protested against a restriction slashing the frequency of the Pas newspaper from twice weekly to once a fortnight.
Of the 12 charged, one had already passed away.
The DDP had subpoenaed 11 witnesses but only two witnesses testified with no response from the rest, said Tian Chua.