To Reduce Is To Increase

Many Malaysians are baffled by the government who flip flops with various actions. In order to reduce certain usages (of services or products) by the citizens of Malaysia, the government has to implement some drastic action to discourage Malaysians.

For example (what I could recall after laughing over it with my colleagues):-

a) To discourage people from travelling overseas, the government will increase the application fee for an international passport.

b) To discourage people from using motor vehicles of more than fifteen years, government decided to get those car owners to spend more to conduct vehicle inspection on the road worthiness. In other words (from certain car industry people), it's to encourage such car owners to spend more to buy the Proton cars.

c) To discourage people from using / discontinue the RON 92 petrol, government said that RON 95 and RON 97 of higher prices are of better petrol quality. In Europe, cars are still running on RON 92 which makes foreign produced cars a better choice as it could run on cheaper fuel and this will affect the sales of local made cars as local made cars may not perform well in RON 92.

d) To prevent people from spending too much, government decided to impose a RM50 penalty for each credit card held.

e) To prevent people from getting diabetes or consume too much sugar, government may discontinue subsidy for this item which will definitely increase the price for sugar.

f) To prevent people from buying cigarettes, the government will enforce cigarette packaging to consist of more cigarettes but at a much much much much higher pricing.

g) To prevent people from congesting the city, the government may in the future impose an entry fee for those motor vehicles that has only one passenger which is the driver himself.

h) To discourage people from using plastic bags anymore, the government (or state government) will instruct the supermarkets not to distribute any plastic bags and to sell canvas bags instead that could be used again and again.

i) To discourage people from buying foreign made / imported cars, the government imposed higher import tariffs on those cars in order for the local made cars to survive. However, the local made cars are sold at a higher price in Malaysia if compared to the exported version where the specs are slightly better.

j) To discourage people from congesting the roads and to get the citizens to take public transportation (referring to the lousy bus systems), the government decreased subsidy for the petrol.

What I can say is that the government will tend to 'punish' its citizens into doing something instead of coming up with an encouraging plan so that people will do it willingly which could benefit the citizens at the same time.

Definitely wrong approach in solving problems.

Following were suggested by colleagues:-
a) To decrease cholesterol level for all Malaysians, prices for whatever eggs will be increased up to 50 cents per egg.

b) To discourage people (men generally) from approaching prostitutes, each condom shall be sold at RM50 per piece.

c) To discourage people from eating unhealthy food such as nasi lemak and goreng pisang, coconut and cooking oil will be increased tremendously.
Tags: Malaysia, Price Increase