Inter-Research And Studies (IRAS)

By Hafidz Baharom LET'S have a sepia flashback of growing up in the 1980s, as an example. Girls of all races could wear pinafores. They could skip the headscarf when wearing a baju kurung. Boys could go about in short pants without any issue either. Sharing a canteen for food was not an issue, nor was drinking from the same water bottle for that matter. Flashback to the 1960s, and you would see Malay women in skirts and blouses, and tight fitting kebayas. Drinking alcohol led to eye rolling, but nothing more. Dance parties were all the rage, along with sitting around listening to bossa nova. Let's come back to the present day. Suddenly, you can see a six-year-old girl in a burkini swimming in a pool. A four-year-old is already donning a headscarf while the mother wears a full-faced veil to protect her modesty. Kids go to prayers at the suraus no longer wearing a baju Melayu or a simple t-shirt with a kain pelikat, but full jubahs wafting with the scent of oud.

The Malaysian Trades Union Congress (MTUC) has proposed that employers make a fixed contribution to workers in a separate security fund following their opposition to the Employment Insurance System (EIS), MTUC president Abdul Halim Mansor said the proposal should be considered by the Government if employers or the Malaysian Employers Federation feels that the EIS is unfair to them. “If they feel the EIS is too troublesome to employers, perhaps they should look into making it compulsory for all companies to set aside a certain amount, either in a social security fund or a workers’ account, that should they cease operations, workers will get some sort of protection,” he told a press conference at Menara Perkeso yesterday. He said the allocation should be equivalent to a sum an employee is entitled to under the Employment Termination Lay-off Benefit. He added that the EIS should not be further delayed as it had been postponed in the previous Parliament meeting. “If it has rea

MALAYSIA Airlines Bhd (MAS) never fails to excite, in that every two or three years, the national airline finds itself embroiled in either a restructuring, controversy or disaster. The sad thing this time around is that we Malaysians have to read about its CEO Peter Bellew’s planned departure from the Irish Times and the London Stock Exchange. He could have simply told everyone from the onset instead of denying two weeks ago that he was going to Ryanair. Instead, he said: “I am not going anywhere’’ and that he was “happy to be the CEO of MAS.’’ For Bellew, it is all about doing national service. He has to serve Ryanair, which is Ireland and Europe’s biggest low-cost carrier. He has to help his friend Micheal O’Leary, the boss of Ryanair, who is fighting the pilots to stop flight cancellations. Bellew is hired as COO and, among others, his role is to “calm down” the pilots there. Still, his move took many by surprise and even the MAS board did not know. But you cannot f