Monday 17 November 2008

petrol and corruption

Some people in the government do not know how to count the days. For some reason, the fortnightly petrol review is 2 days late. Maybe our esteemed PM is sleeping on the job again. Anyway, we still have RM 2 petrol now. But then again, the biggest problem with decreasing petrol prices is that the rest of our expenditure doesn't go down accordingly. Hypermarkets sell stuff at prices close to the old prices [when petrol was RM 2.60+]. Public transport fares went up when the price of petrol rocketed through the stratosphere, and now that petrol prices have come down to earth again, the public transport companies insist on further INCREASING their miserably high fares. How is the average city dweller going to afford public transport? This will only contribute to global warming, since most of us will choose to drive rather than take the bus or LRT.
Well, as usual, most of us feel that it is corruption in the government departments which contributes to the whole problem. Actually, this could be closest to the truth. Everywhere else, when crude oil price drops, the petrol price drops correspondingly. Only here, with the government subsidy, the petrol price stays high until 2 weeks later. Then, a very minor decrease of 15 sen is announced. Of course, corruption IS the best answer to most of our problems. Anything wrong in M'sia? Blame it on corruption.

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