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...

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...