Open Your Eyes Folks !!!

The hidden ugly side of Singapore

In between the glamarous buildings and shoppings complexes of this city state, there is huge suffering that the world has never seen. Something that the Singapore government or media will try to hide from the rest of the world. And this is the lives of 80 percent of ‘true’ Singaporeans who live in the republic’s Housing Development Board (low cost) flats.

I, like many young youths, went looking for a better future in this Lion City of opportunity, After four years of working experience in Kuala Lumpur. It was my first experience outside Malaysia and I was very happy to be offered a job in Singapore with a basic salary of S$3,500.

Then, with huge hopes, I started looking for a master bedroom to rent being single. I finally got a master bedroom in Clementi for S$700 a month but only after being rejected by many other landlords for being Indian. The ensuing eight- month ordeal that I spent in this HDB flat really opened my mind to what Singapore is for those who can't earn.

It made me ask if this is the type of development that I ever wanted in my country Malaysia. This is the first time that I felt gifted to be born in Malaysia. Anyway, I lived with a family of three (husband, wife with one daughter) who rented out their master bedroom to me while they slept in the common room.

It was a three-room flat (but unlike in Malaysia, a three-room flat has only two bedrooms). I did not believe it was the master bedroom that I was staying in until I went into the other room and saw that there is no attached bathroom there. I was given a bed and a mattress and also two fans. Then I noticed that the couple with their daughter sleeping on the floor with a thin mattress in the other room. Not even a fan in that room.

Both husband and wife are born Singaporeans and were employed. It was after one month that I realised that the daughter was not going to school regularly and most of the time there would be a quarrel in the early morning between the father and daughter as there was not enough money to pay for the bus to go to school.

There were times when the daughter was very sick and father had no money to take her to see a doctor. It was a real pain in the heart to hear a small girl suffering through the thin walls of this HDB flat. It was unbelievable for me to see this happening in this ultra-modern city. It took me another two months to realise that what was happening in this flat was not an isolated case of urban poverty in Singapore.

It was every where in those HDB flats. There was a Chinese neighbour (an elderly man) and his son had no money to get a taxi to send his father to the clinic for daily diabetic wound-dressing. I soon understood that poverty in Singapore transcends racial boundaries. The whole family of my landlord got a shock that I own a car in Malaysia.

My landlord would keep pestering me every time I come back to Malaysia to bring my car over so that his whole family could go sightseeing in Singapore. In all my life, I never believed people in a developed country like Singapore would ever consider car ownership a privelege.

Three months later, one fine day, I came back home and realised that there was no electricity in the house. This time, my landlord did not have the money to pay for the utility bills. I was back in the Stone Age, using candles. This lasted for days until finally he borrowed money from somewhere and settled the bills.

My landlord as a person I have known during that period never come back drunk or looked like a gambler. He had to pay for his mother’s medical expenses, that much I know. This was the time in my life when I learned what is was like to live in that poor quality HDB flat, drying clothes in the rooms and listening to what the couple talked about in the next room via the thin walls.

It was this time in life that made me to think, ‘Is this what I want Malaysia to be? For those who talk great or look up to Singapore's success, have they ever come and lived in Singapore like I how I did? Have you seen a HDB flat and how it looks like?

Bring your whole family for a dinner using public transport and then rush to catch the last bus. Is this what a 10% growth rate a year is about that we want boast? Does this growth figures mean anything in the first place? Do we want to open our country to expats so that they can progress at the expense of our own Malaysians?

Do we want to ‘progress’ to a level that even our children can't buy a house in our own land? Last, I ask myself. Do we Malaysians look at GDP growth as the only measure to choose our government or are we much more matured than that? Achievement at whose expense?

Be grateful Malaysian... be grateful a lot.....

Malaysiakini by Vijay Kumar | Jul 3, 09 6:48pm

Felda New Challenge ??

Felda should first restructure before going global
Malaysiakini: Dr Collin Abraham | Jun 29, 09 6:36pm

The announcement that Felda will be setting up a new entity, ‘Global Ventures’ is only to be welcomed as being relevant and meaningful if, as implicitly correctly suggested by Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, the forthcoming ‘restructuring’ of Felda ‘pays attention to the needs of settlers’.

This means, in effect, that ‘Global Ventures’ demands the pre-requisite of settlers being involved as stake-holders jointly participating in the organisation and administration of Felda at the highest points of decision-making.

This, in fact, has never been the case, especially as clearly highlighted by the failure to provide ‘listings’ for settlers on the stock exchange, as repeatedly requested by both former prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and indeed Najib himself.

As regards the other ‘failures’ to develop a viable settler community involving the second/third/and even fourth generations, the record speaks for itself, where settlers even successfully obtained legal remedies in connection with a successful court case of cheating against Felda. Another similar legal case is currently pending.

With the greatest of respect and in humility, I have to reiterate therefore that unless the proposed ‘restructuring’ amounts to the radical transformation of Felda as an institution, the new entity of ‘Global Ventures’ will amount to nothing more than the continuation of the cases of ‘pagar makan padi’/’empire-building’ that have repeatedly been ‘exposed’ in the past.

These are very strong negative assertions and this appeal to Najib, therefore, is to make it possible to re-direct and intervene in these new development projections to ensure that they are in line with the founding ideology of Felda, so spectacularly projected by his late father, Razak.

This is a very serious matter that strikes at the heart of the concept, theory and implications for agricultural-industrial plans and programmes particularly in multi-cultural societies, not only for Malaysia but also for Asia and indeed the rural development scenario in the wider world.

Therefore, it is imperative to emphasise that the assertions being made here are based inter alia, on my experiences as a member of Razak’s 11-man national committee for Gerakan Maju (where incidentally I was the only non-Malay and the youngest officer) at a time when we were very much involved in new thinking and research for Felda.

More recently, as the lead consultant and sole report writer for the UNDP social impact assessment of Felda (2002), I was directly concerned with the kind of questions and issues arising from Najib’s statement that ‘Felda (is) set to grab global opportunities’.

It may be useful to ‘highlight’ some of the main observations in the report that have ‘direct’ implications for meaningfully ‘grabbing the global opportunities’ as mentioned by Najib.

1 The structure for reform

Group Settlement Areas Act 1960, Act 530 (amended 1996)

The promulgation of this amendment made it possible for Felda itself to move directly to develop new land settlements on its own accord, because the government had decided to cease doing this since 1990.

‘The implications of this amendment in the context of the objectives of the original 1960 Act appear to be so ‘reactionary’ as to require another full-scale study and re-evaluation of the social impact of this amendment on Felda’.

This is because while the organisation successfully managed to enhance its oil palm production activities, increasing emphasis in its expansion plans and programmes began to focus on non-agricultural areas centered on ‘empire building’.

Because no attempts were made to get settlers listed on the stock exchange, it meant that the shareholders were limited to Felda management and other professionals, who would be the main beneficiaries of the various new subsidiaries and other ventures initiated in its expansion programme.

2 Future sustainability for diversification.

Felda has brought ‘independent’ title-holding settlers completely under its management. This has generated intractable dependency relationships between the settlers and management rather than enhancing the process of social change through motivation, capacity-building, creativity and entrepreneurship as was the basic and fundamental objective in the original Felda ideology.

Because no attempts were made to involve settlers in the management of the schemes, they ‘have little confidence in decision-making and indeed seem helpless to take control of their lives and to move on. They, therefore, leave it to the management to take over and organise their ‘freed’ land titles as soon as they receive them’.

There is a low-level of diversification of economic activities associated with oil palm production particularly through down-stream/up-stream new products resulting in settlers not being exposed to flexible knowledge-based training.

Therefore the potential of innovative capacity especially among youth is not tapped. As a result Felda has not sustained a strategic role as catalyst in industrialisation and modernisation.

Related Article:
http://malaysiainsider.com/index.php/business/30948-felda-to-seek-listing-soon

Raising Unemployment..

Saturday June 27, 2009
Rising unemployment despite green shoots
Economic Matters
By Cecilia Kok of StarBizWeek

DURING her recent trip back to Malaysia, Aileen (not her real name), an executive at an oil and gas company in London, told her friends who had been applying for some professional jobs in Britain, to put their plans on hold because current opportunities were scarce.

She pointed to the lack of activity in the once lively and busy streets of Canary Wharf, the trendy financial district of London, as a sign of how badly the British economy has been hit by the global financial crisis.

Many people have lost their jobs since the acceleration of the financial crisis in the third quarter of last year, and many more are expected to suffer the same fate in the coming months as companies across industries experience severe slowdown in their businesses.

While most of us are not there to experience first-hand the depth of the crisis in Britain, the official data tells the story. The British government recently reported that a broader measure of unemployment in the country rose 232,000 to 2.26 million for the three months to April, taking the unemployment rate to 7.2%.

Despite the talk that the worst is over, the Confederation of British Industry expects unemployment in the country to peak at 3.03 million, or a rate of 9.6%, in the second quarter of next year.

Worsening unemployment is not a problem faced only by Britain, but also by many other nations. For instance, the unemployment rate in the United States is expected to exceed 10% this year. It stood at 9.4% last month, up from 8.9% in April.

Over the week, the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said it projected the average unemployment in its 30 member countries, comprising some of the most developed markets in the world, to reach 10% by the end of next year, up from 7.8% in April.

Unemployment is usually the public’s best gauge of the intensity of the current economic storm. Although recent indicators have shown signs of diminishing economic damage, and have pointed to possible recovery for some countries by the second half of this year, labour markets worldwide are expected to languish over a longer period of time.

The International Labour Office (ILO) director-general Juan Somavia recently explained that past experience had suggested a considerable lag of four to five years in the recovery of labour markets after economic recovery. He said there was a risk of the global jobs crisis persisting for the next few years.

In the Global Employment Trends Update released last month, the ILO projected the total number of people unemployed worldwide this year to range between 210 million and 239 million, or between 6.5% and 7.4% of the global labour force.

For the South-East Asia and the Pacific regions, the United Nations agency projected the total number of unemployed people this year to range between 16 million and 18 million, or 5.4% to 6.2% of the regional labour force.

A country with a persistently weak labour market poses a high risk of experiencing slow growth for a number of years, even if its economy does turn around by the end of the year. Rising unemployment also means that more people will fall into poverty, and this could weigh on consumer spending, a key component in most economies. For instance, consumer spending represents about half of Malaysia’s gross domestic product and 70% of that of the United States.

The Department of Statistics is expected to announce Malaysia’s unemployment rate for the first quarter of 2009 by the end of this month. The country’s unemployment rate last year stood at 3.3%, and is expected to reach 4.5% this year.

On Tuesday, the Manpower Department director-general Datuk Ismail Abdul Rahim said there had not been a massive retrenchment in the country so far. He estimated that the total number of employees who lost their jobs since last August to be 37,000.

Economists polled by StarBizWeek recently also agreed that retrenchment in Malaysia had not been that widespread but affected mainly employees in the electrical and electronics manufacturing and export-oriented companies.

Further improvements in the labour market, nevertheless, will depend on the effectiveness of the fiscal expenditures by the Government in creating new jobs.

Test Your Personality

PERSONALITY TEST

MAKE A WISH BEFORE BEGINNING THE TEST!!

A Warning! Answer the questions as you go along.

Put the following 5 animals in the order of your preference.
Cow Tiger Sheep Horse Pig

Write one word that describes each one of the following:

Dog
Cat
Rat
Coffee
Sea

Think of someone (who also knows you and is important to you) that you can relate them to the following colours (do not repeat your answer twice).

Name just one person for each colour.
Yellow Orange Red White Green

Finally, write down your favourite number and your favourite day of the week.

Look at the interpretations below: (but first before continuing, repeat your wish.)

This will define your priorities in your life.

Cow Signifies CAREER
Tiger Signifies PRIDE
Sheep Signifies LOVE
Horse Signifies FAMILY
Pig Signifies MONEY


Your description of dog implies your own personality.
Your description of cat implies the personality of your partner.
Your description of rat implies the personality of your enemies.
Your description of coffee is how you interpret sex.
Your description of the sea implies your own life.

Yellow: Someone you will never forget
Orange: Someone you consider your true friend
Red: Someone that you really love
White: Your twin soul
Green: Someone that you will remember for the rest of your life

Is it True???
Fwd by boonchert on 16/6/09.....

CPO Theft & FAKE DXP Seeds

TIMELY ACT FOR THE AUTHORITY. THESE CULPRITS MADE TONS OF MONEY AND DEMOLISH OUR OP BUSINESS IN FUTURE. ACT NOW OR PERISH LATER...

THE NST: Plugging the palm oil leak
By Ooi Tee ChingPublished: 2009/06/11

Malaysia plans to step up enforcement against oil palm seed scams and theft of palm fruits and oil, which are costing the country billions in lost revenues.


The Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Tan Sri Bernard Dompok has told the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) to buck up as these crimes have been going on for a long time.

"I want MPOB to step up enforcement immediately. All these oil palm seed scams and oil thefts must stop," he told Business Times in an interview in Putrajaya on Tuesday.

For a start, Dompok gave the green light to MPOB to licence palm oil transporters. This is allowed under the Malaysian Palm Oil Board Act 1998.

"I want to tighten up the loopholes. The transporters need to be licensed and we'll put in place a whistle-blowing scheme. Once MPOB board of directors give their consensus, it will come back to me for my signature and then we'll have it gazetted," Dompok said.





The companies will also have to install global positioning systems on their tankers to keep tabs of their movements. "Transporters must take responsibility for the actions of their drivers and pay the price if their tankers are involved in illegal activities," he said.

Under MPOB (Quality) Regulations 2005, whoever steals or contaminates crude palm oil can be fined up to RM250,000 or two years' jail or both.

In a separate interview, Palm Oil Refiners Association of Malaysia (Poram) acting chairman Yong Chin Fatt said refiners have suffered much from oil pilferage.

Refiners have no way of knowing whether the palm oil brought in by tankers are stolen or not.

"We're all established and we only accept oil that come in tankers, not in drums. These tankers come with the necessary documentation from the millers," he said.

"In fact, we incur additional costs when we're duped into buying contaminated cargo. We suspect such highly-organised crimes, that have spread to Sabah and Sarawak, are by syndicates. We appeal for more stringent enforcement," he added.

Dompok has also told MPOB to be more vigilant in stamping out oil palm seed scams.

"These scams have serious implications on the livelihood of thousands of smallholders and the country's average oil palm yield," he said.

It was recently reported that there are syndicates deceiving planters into buying low-yielding seeds that are not dura and psifera (DXP) crossbreds currently sold by the 19 genuine producers.

Last year, MPOB managed to seize 6.13 million fake DXP seeds and this amounted to RM11.35 million in opportunity loss for genuine producers.

However, the potential revenue loss runs into the billions in the long term as the fake seeds will not produce as much fruits.

Malaysia's oil palms are the most productive in the world because of government policy to use high-yielding crossbred seeds of the mother palms of the DXP strains.

Regular seeds from existing oil palm trees will only yield five to 10 tonnes of fresh fruit bunches in a year compared with 25 tonnes for DXP seeds.

Cross breeding of high-yielding DXP seeds takes time and the seeds are sold for RM2 each.

Happy Agong Birthday

Happy Agong Birthday.
Raja agung raja disembah..
Daulat Tuanku.

Quit Smoking Anyone??

Cigarettes are one of few products which can be sold legally which can harm and even kill you over time if used as intended.
Currently there are ongoing lawsuits in the USA which aim to hold tobacco companies responsible for the effects of smoking on the health of long term smokers.

Benzene (petrol additive)A colourless cyclic hydrocarbon obtained from coal and petroleum, used as a solvent in fuel and in chemical manufacture - and contained in cigarette smoke. It is a known carcinogen and is associated with leukaemia.

Formaldehyde (embalming fluid)A colourless liquid, highly poisonous, used to preserve dead bodies - also found in cigarette smoke. Known to cause cancer, respiratory, skin and gastrointestinal problems.

Ammonia (toilet cleaner)Used as a flavouring, frees nicotine from tobacco turning it into a gas, found in dry cleaning fluids.

Acetone (nail polish remover)Fragrant volatile liquid ketone, used as a solvent, for example, nail polish remover - found in cigarette smoke.

Tar Particulate matter drawn into lungs when you inhale on a lighted cigarette. Once inhaled, smoke condenses and about 70 per cent of the tar in the smoke is deposited in the smoker's lungs.

Nicotine (insecticide/addictive drug)One of the most addictive substances known to man, a powerful and fast-acting medical and non-medical poison. This is the chemical which causes addiction.

Carbon Monoxide (CO) (car exhaust fumes)An odourless, tasteless and poisonous gas, rapidly fatal in large amounts - it's the same gas that comes out of car exhausts and is the main gas in cigarette smoke, formed when the cigarette is lit. Others you may recognize are :

Arsenic (rat poison), Hydrogen Cyanide (gas chamber poison)

source: Health Education Authority (UK) - Lifesaver
http://www.quit-smoking-stop.com/