BN's 2012 Budget: Taxpayers totally forgotten
By Viktor WongWe are sure that everyone of us had seen and read the Barisan Nasional (BN) government's 2012 budget and its impact to our people. So, what do we get then?
First thing in our mind here is there's actually nothing at all for us in our capacity as taxpayers or could we say a better word like, stakeholder of this country of ours. Yes, the handout was so and overly "generous" but in the end who is bearing all those costs and effects? Clearly, it is our people who has to bear all those?
The perks and benefits of civil servants had increased so much given to the fact that the federal government has the highest number of employees in this country and yet they are still employing reasoning that they are still unable to cover their various "workloads" as claimed.
And despite these civil servants has been getting more and more benefits, their productivity has never increase at all, based on the public feedback on their services and responses to public applications, requests and assistance.
Again, despite their low productivity up to now, we as taxpayers will still have to use our money to pay for the betterment of their benefits, perks, allowances and a lot more, but what we got in the end? Wait, wait, wait for a very long time to respond, and sometimes there is no reply at all to our grievances, rejections after rejections, poor customer service because of their long break times, because they didn't have enough staffs to man the service counters, long lines in their servicing counters until we have to wait for hours, days and at times we would get a very unfriendly response and so on. Is this what our people as taxpayers have to endure with in our daily lives?
Just look at the government hospitals for instance, what we we see, especially those centralized and main hospitals. They are very often crammed and jammed up almost daily and in every second, you could see our people, patients and visitors were all frustrated with the entire situation.
Why are these main or centralized hospitals have to cram and jam up in such a situation? It is because those hospitals in the district or county levels aren't fully functional at all. The reason is those specialists, doctors, surgeons and other required specializations are all centralized in the state level or main hospitals in the middle of the cities and metropolitan.
In the end, what we get from these district and county hospitals? Nothing, but instead these "white elephant" hospitals will ask these concern patients to go to the centralized or state hospitals where they will end up waiting for hours, days and if they were to be admitted, these patients will soon find themselves end up on their beds at the walkways instead of inside the wads.
It clearly shows that all those "white elephant" hospitals in the district and county levels would end up as being unproductive. What is the use of building so many hospitals in districts, county and rural areas when they will not be able to fully functional in order to receive all kinds of patients or to treat various sickness?
Then, about better deals for our poor households, can the BN government really show us the cash that they are offering before we could consider a kind of thank you word to you? However, we wouldn't have to say that anyway even if the BN were to show it out as we could see the inflation keeps on increasing and we are the ones who will have to bear all those consequences in the end of the day.
Besides increasing inflation, our incomes are shrinking despite some being considered as "highly paid", we are still facing with the most difficult situation to make ends meet. Borrowing is another factor, where we also have to bear the higher interest rates while our savings and deposits were not well appreciated because of low and unattractive interest gains.
Apart from that, we also did not see any tax relieve for our people following the increasingly high cost of living and inflation. The wealthy ones got even wealthier, while the poor ones got even poorer which causes a very imbalance socio-economic situation and if the gap widens we would soon see only the elites and the "golongan bangsawan" who will be running our country and pocketing all the incomes and resources for themselves.
Furthermore, corruption is still losing out of control in this country and the BN's budget did not specifically mention efforts to tackle it effectively. It is rampaging in the not only in the police force but it also spread into the armed forces' establishment, the Malaysian Anti Corruption Commission (MACC), the judiciary, the government's contract and tendering system, the other enforcement agencies and the government linked companies (GLCs) as well.
Look, even MACC officers who were charged of combating corruptions are also involved in corruption and power abuses. So, how is our people going to trust the MACC in their efforts to combat corruption nationwide?
The one very disturbing our people is, the BN government is employing too many people into too many unnecessary positions in various sectors and GLCs, covering up losses made up by various ineffective agencies and unproductive GLCs, buying and spending on unnecessary things like the submarines, too many defense procurement, giving and awarding too many unnecessary contracts or tenders to BN linked contractors with high and beyond the market pricing and all those which has no benefit to our people at all.
All these, are they productive? Do all these bring any benefit or betterment for our people? Does all these ease the burden of our people?
