Cowboy Caleb the liberal arts, grown-up stuff & random mischief

It’s Tough Being Poor In Malaysia

A few nights ago in Malaysia, another husband and wife couple called me and my wife up to see if we would like to have dinner before I started travelling again. They came over and picked us up in their little Perodua Kelisa car which had been modded to look like a Mini Cooper.

Before we went to the restaurant, we first stopped at a gas station to fill up the tank. Now the Perodua Kelisa’s petrol tank was almost totally empty. The total bill came to a shocking RM88 to fill up this little 1.0 liter car thanks to the new petrol price of RM2.70.

For those of you who don’t live in Malaysia, imagine how much regular and larger-sized cars are going to have to pay for petrol. Ridiculous by any standards since Malaysia has oil and exports it for profit.

Now we all know that Malaysia is still a third world country, and many Malaysians work in factories as operators. Consider then that even the poorest Malaysian owns a little sub-1.0 liter car like the Kelisa thanks to easy loans and lack of regulation. These Malaysians make the minimum wage of around RM850/month. So if they’re going to have to start paying RM88 to fill up their tanks, then that’s almost a whopping 10% of their monthly salary going into the petrol tank. Put together the total cost of car installments + insurance + road tax and they definitely are not going to be able to afford a car any longer.

So much for the Malaysian dream.

And in today’s shocker - the Malaysian government plans to act as housing loan guarantors to poor folk who can’t afford to buy their own homes.

What a load of bullshit.

Poor people can’t afford to buy homes because of inflation and the ever increasing cost of basic items. All of which are problems created, perpetuated and worsened by the current Malaysian government. Tackle those problems and build cheaper homes for the poor, instead of shackling them to government-endorsed loans which they can already ill afford.

It’s not rocket science!

yup quite tough kan. hehe :)

instead of encourage the people to own their own house, the stupid government is pushing the pooe people to buy peroduo cars…..the poor is getting poorer with their depreciating petrol drinking asset.

fucking comparism to the price up north. my cows an sheep costs much less than that