At about 2:30pm today, I was returning to the office from KK town, I noticed a buildup of traffic. As I drove I realized that the jam was caused by the long queues to the petrol kiosks. Immediately I thought that this was due to a price hike in petrol again. However, I recalled reading a press release on the PM's website, saying that the government would not hike prices for year 2008 after considering the rakyat's response to the recent petrol price hike. RM1.90 to RM2.70 is bad enough, if the government persisted to increase the prices as first planned to RM4.00, I can't imagine what the people of Malaysia would do.
After hurdling the long queues that were about 1KM long which caused pretty bad jams even not at rush hour, I finally arrived my office. I received a call from my mum telling me to pump petrol because there was going to be a three day strike where all petrol kiosks will close for business. My colleagues then further explained that the petrol kiosks were losing money with every liter sold resulting is operating losses. I do not know how true these stories are because I have not checked the real reasons behind the strike. So is this strike a rumour or truth? We shall wait and see.
In the mean time, I received a sms from Maxis stating "(The Star) Officials from Shell Malaysia and Sabah Petroleum Dealers Association stressed that there is no truth to the rumours of petrol kiosks closing for 3 days". Then at 6 pm, someone forwarded me a sms from an angry driver (very angry I presume) saying "Petrol strike start 26th 8am till 4pm. Today is rumour. Pls forward bcoz many tailingong made the traffic jam". This sms really made me laugh. Sorry for the rudeness or inappropriateness of the translations of language. Translation of 'tailingong' directly from the hakka dialect to english is ‘big **** (male private part) crazy’. Roughly what they meant to say was 'foolish people'.
Although I do not like the idea of strikes or demonstrations I feel that it comes to a time when something more physically obvious (not like punching or hurting someone) should be done to show the government the people’s dissatisfaction. I think most people are angry that the government implemented the oil hikes without putting much thought about the long term. We see day in and day out the stories in our newspapers about the plight of lower income families. Trust me, there are families who are much worse off then those who shared their stories in the papers.
From business point of view, raw material costs has risen to an average of 40%. Business owners find it difficult to increase prices because then it will too expensive for the customers. On the other hand, there is pressure for salary increases. For instances, for sales people, without higher transportation allowances, how could they perform their jobs effectively? After adding the increase in raw material costs and other operation costs, nothing is left actually. The huge daily hurdle is now just to sustain and hope for the best because no business wants to run to see just losses month after month. Business closes down, there will be retrenchment, unemployment rate goes up, economy slows down as spending decreases, increase in non performing loans, etc.
I personally would like to see what strategies the government has in place to counter the many problems that the Malaysian economy will see in the next coming months. This is just the beginning of something more grave to come if nothing is done to rectify situation.
By the time I finished this blog entry, I got a call telling me that there is no more jam and no more strike. The issues behind the strike threat were discussed and resolved. Well… so much for all the hype. I just am thankful I did not line up for petrol for few hours this afternoon. I would have ended up wasting more petrol.
