Inter-Research And Studies (IRAS)

Oleh WH Cheng Baru-baru ini banyak pihak yang asyik menluahkan mengenai pelbagai masalah perancangan, pembangunan dan pengurusan rumah-rumah kos rendah untuk rakyat jelata yang kurang mampu yang kini semakin tidak dapat dicapai oleh golongan tersebut, walaupun usaha untuk menampung permintaan telahpun giat dilaksanakan di merata tempat di seluruh negara. Pelbagai masalah dan persoalan yang timbul, malah adakala Umno juga cuba menghubung kaitkan masalah tersebut dengan penindasan terhadap masyarakat Melayu, khususnya di negeri-negeri Selangor dan Pulau Pinang. Jika diteliti dengan lebih mendalam, masalah sebenarnya yang sering timbul di dalam perancangan, pembangunan dan pengurusan rumah-rumah kos rendah bukannya sengaja disasarkan terhadap masyarakat Melayu seperti yang sering didakwa oleh Umno tetapi ianya lebih kepada terlalu banyak pihak yang dipertanggungjawabkan di dalam peranan ini, yang mengakibatkan peranan yang bertindih, malah ada yang bertentangan antara satu sama...

By 2030, up to 800 million employees could be displaced by automation and will need to find new jobs, according to a new report. The study released on Friday by McKinsey Global Institute said that within the next 15 years, nearly 15 percent of the global workforce may need to switch jobs, with 75 million to 375 million workers changing occupation categories. Millions of workers will have different jobs in the not-so-distant future, but their employment depends on how quickly they can adapt to advances in technology. This shift in labour demand could be larger than anything that we’ve seen in the United States and Europe since the early 1900s when young workers left farms to go work in big cities, McKinsey outlines in its 160-pages of research. By 2030, up to 9 per cent of labour demand will be in new types of occupations and analysts predict that there will be enough new job creation to offset automation. However, it all depends on whether workers have the necessary skills to transiti...

While economists are largely positive on the resurrection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), now known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), Bantah TPPA believes that a renewed cost-benefit analysis is warranted to determine the impact of the amended deal on Malaysia. According to Bantah TPPA deputy chairman Azlan Awang, the previous report has become irrelevant after the US pullout. “We should do a new cost-benefit analysis because previously we were told that we will achieve economic gain by having access to the US market, but now (with the US pullout) there is no more benefit there – only cost,” he told SunBiz today. “The people also need to know what are the benefits that they will get as the US is no longer in the pact,” he said. The TPP covered 40% of the world economy before US President Donald Trump abandoned the 12-nation deal in January, following through on a promise made during his presidential campaign. It is now left with 11 member ...

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...

Rang Undang-undang Skim Insurans Pekerja (RUU SIP) yang telah dibentangkan buat kali pertama di parlimen yang bertujuan untuk membantu para pekerja yang kehilangan pekerjaan akibat ditamatkan perkhidmatan dijangka tidak akan begitu membebankan para pekerja disektor swasta. Namun, ianya masih bergantung kepada bagaimana skim ini akan dilaksana dan diuruskan kelak. Ia merupakan satu perbelanjaan tambahan buat majikan dan para pekerja sepertimana caruman yang dibuat selama ini kepada PERKESO dan KWSP. Perniagaan dan industri kecil dan sederhana (SME) dijangka memerlukan lebih masa untuk menyesuaikan diri kerana kumpulan inilah yang merasai impaknya terhadap kos operasi mereka, sementara syarikat gergasi tidak akan merasai impak terhadap kos tersebut kerana kadar caruman yang masih kecil. RUU SIP yang belum selesai pembentangannya telahpun ditunda ke bulan Oktober ini akan mewajibkan majikan dan pekerja mencarum ke dalam SIP berdasarkan kadar yang bakal ditetapkan mengikut tangga ga...

This article has earlier appeared in Beritadaily.com on 14/4/2017 Clarification from Putrajaya is urgently required! Is the Prime Minister’s Department (PMD) taking precedence over the education sector, to the extent that budgets for public universities and related sectors were slashed. Does Putrajaya now regard education as of lower priority for our younger generation today? Party politics and the politics of survival have apparently become an important task for Putrajaya, particularly the PMD itself. When we complain of low productivity and a bloated civil service of about 1.68 million employees, the leadership in Putrajaya decided to slash the budgets for public universities instead without considering the consequences to the coming generations. A source has been reported as saying that the budget cuts of public universities were some sort of “punishment” because many students and academics had been voicing out against policies and systems of the government. If this is the case, ...

This article has earlier appeared in Beritadaily.com on 30/3/2017 When the Romanian government planned to enforce a decree to make power abuse a crime punishable by jail only when the sum involved exceeds 200,000 lei, which is equivalent to RM210,000, an estimated half a million Romanians took to the streets to protest their government’s plan to legitimise corruption below the said amount. The Romanian police did not try their best to prevent the demonstration from taking place in the city of Bucharest by arresting prominent leaders of opposition parties and civil rights organisations. This is part of the democratic process which the Romanian security has abided by. But in Malaysia, the Umno-dominated Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition government has very often viewed protests and demonstrations as acts detrimental to parliamentary democracy, thus enacting many kinds of restrictions under the Peaceful Assembly Act, Security Offences (Special Measures) Act (Sosma), Prevention of...

This article has earlier appeared in Beritadaily.com on 27/2/2017 Well, the so-called PAS-sponsored Himpunan 355 has come and gone. The rally was supposedly to garner support for PAS president Hadi Awang’s private member’s bill, which is expected to be tabled in parliament next month, to enhance punishments under the Shariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act 1965, also known as Act 355. PAS’ long-time arch rival Umno has also come out in support of Hadi’s bill, citing the importance of uniting regardless of political affiliation in order to protect the religion from threats. Can PAS and Umno enlighten us on who is “threatening” Islam in Malaysia and how the “threat” has been initiated? Are they able to identify the culprits who have threatened the religion all this while? Prior to PAS’ decision to forward the bill to amend Act 355 to provide for stiffer shariah punishments, did they scrutinise the bill to look for measures that would enforce good governance and curb corrupt...

This article has earlier appeared in the Beritadaily.com on 27/1/2017 The scandal surrounding the state-owned 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) and the case of a RM2.6 billion deposit found in the personal account of Prime Minister Najib Razak have not only become local headlines but have also gained international attention. This is because this nation has become Umno’s Malaysia where everyone must say yes and bow respectfully to the Umno president. Our nation’s three major organs – the executives, parliament and the judiciary system – are all right under his thumb. This is why he managed to bulldoze through many oppressive laws for use against his critics and opponents in order to stay in power. In Malaysia, the position of the prime minister has become too powerful. Checks and balances on him are currently non-existent because the institutions themselves have made him so. As for our parliamentary system, no doubt there are some checks and balances on matters pertaining to govern...

This article has earlier appeared in Beritadaily.com on 9/1/2017 The issue of an opposition shadow cabinet has suddenly surfaced again following a poser by an Umno cabinet minister on the opposition coalition Pakatan Harapan’s readiness to govern the country should they win the next general election. In response to the challenge, a leader from Pakatan Harapan component Parti Amanah Negara gave an assurance that the opposition coalition’s shadow cabinet will be announced this year. So, what is so important about the opposition shadow cabinet today and why did Umno so often remind us that DAP’s own shadow spokespersons on ministerial portfolios are a sign that the party would dump its Pakatan Harapan partners in order to rule on its own should the opposition coalition win the next general election? Is it logical for DAP to rule on its own when it will only contest 50 parliamentary seats out of the total 222 seats? Even if DAP makes a clean sweep of the 50 seats, can it rule o...