Petrol price hike

The government says subsidies cuts are necessary to maintain the livelihood, the continuity of our economy, and to improve the standard of living in Malaysia. They also say that Malaysians are paying the cheapest petrol prices in our region and targeted fuel subsidy to receive the cut! But what "they" fail to mention is that we Malaysians are also paying for the most expensive car prices in the world! What we pay in car price taxes can pay for our petrol subsidies for the lifetime of our rides.... WTF?!?!?!

Subsidies to IPPs (Independant Power Producers) should be the ones receiving the cut since their reported to profit from RM 100mil to RM1bil every year, as mentioned by Petaling Jaya Utara MP Tony Pua. Why the heck should they be receiving subsidies is beyond my understanding.

WTF are "they" doing and why is the rakyat (the people) made to pay for all the misconstrued budgets and funding, and "payments" to privatised corporations? Why are we made to "subsidise" all the funding that have gone down the drain due to over budgeted projects and mismanaged funds?

Furthermore, there are ones that imply that we, the rakyat, should look into taking public transportation to ease congestion and to reduce fuel consumption. The people's main utilisation of trasportation is to and fro work but our public transport, here in Penang, does not travel to the industrial area where the factories are located. So how are workers supposed to utilise public transportation in this scenario? Not to mention our busses are never on time and no one even knows the public bus schedule! How is the price hike justified when the people are not provided the infrastructure to cope?

p.s. I hear rumours that Penang bridge toll will also be raised, which we were promised would only be paid until the cost of the bridge construction was paid off. However, just as that date was approaching a few years back, the bridge toll was privatised and we're still paying toll to date.

One-off increase, why do it twice?

Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Datuk Shahrir Abdul Samad was found mentioning his justification for the one-off price increase of fuel.

In justifying the 78 sen per litre increase for petrol, Shahrir said the amount was the second choice.

“It was either 50 sen, 78 sen or RM1. Initially it was RM1, but then we decided that rather than placing it at 50 sen and then increasing it later, we would just stick to a one-off increase.

“Why do something twice when it can be implemented once?” he asked.
-source The Star

I find this a rather hypocritical albeit pretentious statement, seeing that the reason for the import tax on automobiles have to be slowly reduced so as to not impact the citizens (while protecting a certain manufacturer) resale value whilst the fuel prices had to be raised all at once so that they don't have to come up off their comfy fat asses to ammend the implementation again!

Now how would this sudden increase of 78cents fare for the low-mid income earners that are already making ends meet, and being raised right after the price hike of rice!