"The quality and availability of public goods like education, public housing, public health, crime prevention have all declined, while child and aged care and public transport are near inexistent, resulting in a Hobson's choice for the poor and middle class in either facing the decline in living conditions or an ever higher cost of maintaining a decent lifestyle.
A total of 57.8 per cent of the country's 5.8 million families live on a combined monthly income below RM3,000, including 8.6 per cent who make less than RM1,000 per month. The already skyrocketing inflation, and the impending crisis, has hit them really hard.
The dependence on government-related employment and foreign workers over the last decade stops the economy as a whole from moving up the value chain and to respond to a crisis effectively. One in four of Malaysia's labour force is a legal foreign worker while approximately one in four in the workforce works for the public sector directly or indirectly, for instance, in government-linked corporations. The private sector lacks the capacity to innovate and compete internationally, thus hindering its ability to weather the storm.
The challenge of our time is to ensure that there is sufficient food on the table of the almost 60 per cent of our nation's families, and to ensure that their quality of life does not descend further."
With all these problems, we still see in our national papers, the headlines carrying news of the UMNO nomination; of House Speaker rejecting motions, suspending MP for seemingly minute and personal emotional reasons.....hmmm God help us!
There is also the added problems of retrenchment in the Singapore labour market, and thus all these will be back in Malaysia; can we just ignore these social problems?
So, all MPs and elected reps and councillors and all of us; GET REAL! The challenges ahead will be difficult but not impossible to overcome.
God's grace, peace and strength be with us all.
