The Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was angry yesterday. He ordered an immediate inspection of all government buildings for defects.

He said: “I feel angry. I feel ashamed. What the hell is this? It’s so new and such a thing happened.

“Something must have gone wrong somewhere. We need to know. I can’t be jumping all over the place!”

The Prime Minister was referring to a spate of embarrassing defects in new government offices — the collapse of a ceiling due to a leaky sprinkler system at the Entrepreneur and Co-operative Development Ministry in Putrajaya on Saturday, the ceiling collapse in a secretary’s room at the world’s largest court complex at the Jalan Duta court complex yesterday and on April 11, the Immigration Department headquarters in Putrajaya had to be closed after water flooded the seven-floor building following a failure in plumbing, turning and evacuating more than 1.000 people.

On March 22, Abdullah reacted in disbelief when what he never expected happened — a landslide in Putrajaya (Precinct 9) only inches away from three 15-storey government apartments, damaging 25 cars and evacuating more than 1,500 people from Blocks A, B and C in Phase 11 of the government housing complex.

The Prime Minister said he was angry and he “can’t be jumping all over the place”. But there were no signs that he was really either. Read the rest of this entry »

Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak should give a full statement of what he knew about the Mongolian woman Altantuya Shaariibuu who was murdered and blown to bits with powerful high-security C4 explosive last October instead of letting out information in bits and pieces.

On the eve of Ijok nomination on Wednesday (18th April), Najib made his first comment when he said he was not afraid of allegations linking him to the case of the murdered Mongolian woman, that they were “merely lies to discredit him” and that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Attorney-General Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail and the police “knew the truth”.

On Ijok nomination the next day, Najib said that he “would not take lying down” accusations hurled against him by the opposition in the Ijok by-election campaign and would “respond to the personal attacks to the fullest extent possible… in the context of the law”.

Last night, Najib released another bit of information when he said in Ijok that he had never met Altantuya.

He said: “I have only seen pictures of her in the media.” Read the rest of this entry »

Fuming emails by irate victims of the totally unnecessary 2 ½ hr Penang Bridge closure on Wednesday, not because of any bomb hoax but the unbelievable ineptitude of Penang Chief Minister Tan Sri Dr. Koh Tsu Koon and Penang Works and Publ.ic Utilities Exco Koay Kar Huah.

This is one such fuming email:

The real cause?

Perhaps Datuk Dr Lim KY is going to regret when he had chosen a “coward”/soft/stupid/impotent leader!

Malaysia is not USA, where Tom Dick & Harry can b president. Their Executive System is strong enough for any stupid leader to order any emergency, crisis or war. Here our executive just push up without serious assessment and analysis of the case, they just like to let “boss”/leader to make decision and get rid of responsibility! So who is to be blamed when rakyat is the ultimate loser, many Chinese who went back to Penang for cheng beng were stranded and cannot get back to work in time, many missed their scheduled return trip, many were exhausted by the traffic jam and felt sick/fatigued. All in all just because somebody made an enquiry and the Police over reacted and CM making stupid decision without even using all available resources, brain, consideration to verify the case first.

This is very dangerous if in future he were to be subject to false alarm and declare state of emergency and ppl will take advantage of his weakness and then create chaos when they want to . And now we saw that Penang CM was fooled by another hoax call!! It is due to his richman’s son background making him not a good leader!? He cannot afford to take risk and verify first b4 making decision and promote a “fear”/kiasi/kiasu culture to Penangites to follow. Ppl R so easy to fictitiously create rumour and spread fear, they falsely accuse ppl breeding aedes, breeding snakes and evil, so they can then make use of MPPP mechanism to help clean house as well as “clean” his “eye sore” which he is jealous of but are the property of other ppl. Read the rest of this entry »

THE FLOODS OF TAMAN TTDI JAYA SHAH ALAM
by Z. IBRAHIM

For those who moved into the neighborhood of Taman TTDI Jaya in the “planned” city of Shah Alam 15 years ago, little did they realize that it would be a non-ending nightmare of recurrent flooding.

The trust they had in the developers and all those promises that the land had been adequately raised to sustain a 100-year rain forecast obviously in retrospect was nothing more then a “con” to entice innocent house buyers to part with their hard-earned money to buy these homes. Worse affected were the shop-owners who today have to face floods almost on a monthly basis. How is this possible?

Despite all the technical explanations by the developers, DID, MBSA and the Menteri Besar himself it appears plain to anyone with common sense that the area indeed is topographically the lowest point in the entire locality and water undoubtedly whether from the area itself or drainage upstream from KL would indeed overflow and stagnate at this Taman.

After the horrific floods of last year, the State government came up with an interim plan to raise the river bunds to prevent overflowing but the floods keep coming with even greater speed.

You see, despite knowing that this place is already flood prone, the area between TTDI Jaya, Bukit Jelutong and the TUDM air force base has been stripped bare to make way for industrial development.

The entire area does not possess proper drains and even a kid will tell you the massive run off during heavy rain will of course pool at this housing estate located beneath — Taman TTDI Jaya.

But this common sense appears to have slipped through the minds of authorities who allowed this massive land clearing without a thought to parents, the infirm, children, businesses and schools who occupy this housing estate. Read the rest of this entry »

Tam Yeng Siang copied his letter to New Straits Times, as follows:

The Natural Resources and Environment Minister Datuk Seri Azmi Khalid should stop his three-year “sleeping” on the gross injustice of the land law in the country allowing forgery of land titles and fraudulent land transfers and should get Cabinet approval tomorrow to introduce a bill to amend the National Land Code in the current parliamentary meeting to overrule the Federal Court decision on Adorna case.

Last week, the Director-General of Lands and Mines Department, Datuk Zoal Azha Yusof, who was promoted to the post last August from his previous position as Selangor’s Land and Mines Director, said there is a need to amend the National Land Code (NLC) to restore property owners’ rights which have been affected by Adorna Properties Sdn Bhd v Boonsom Bunyanit.

Zoal Azha said he would bring up the matter with the Attorney-General.

How long would this process take? Another two, three or five years?

Such procrastination and insensitivity to the gross injustice created by the Federal Court’s 2001 decision in Adorna case, which interpreted Section 340 of the NLC to favour innocent buyers of land transferred through forgery or fraud, has destroyed the integrity of land titles, leaving the original owners without any means to recover their land. It reflects very poorly on a government which claims to be efficient, just and pro-active in allowing a gross injustice in the land law to stay unchallenged for the past seven years.

The Adorna case is a heart-rending tale which took more than a decade before it finally ended with gross injustice to the rightful owner. Read the rest of this entry »

The answer by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Health Ministry, Datuk Lee Kah Choon during question time today that the government does not have statistics about the number of patients nationwide who died in ambulance on their way to hospital is the latest evidence not only of deteriorating medical and health services in the country, but of the larger issue of the macro problem of the worsening public delivery system despite all the promises of reform.

I find the indifference and insensitivity demonstrated by Lee’s answer most unacceptable as it was only on Friday that the country was shocked by the news report of the totally unnecessary death of Yusnita Abas, 31, wife of factory worker, Ghafur Mohd Ibrahim because the ambulances at Kepala Batas Hospital were “all out of petrol” and could not send her in time for emergency surgery at the Penang Hospital.

In the 50-year independent history of Malaysia, this is the first time a person had died because all the ambulances at a hospital had run out of petrol — tragic proof that public service delivery system and ethos have been getting from bad to worse.

Such a shameful episode had not happened when the country achieved independence in 1957 and the ensuing 49 years. Why is it happening now?

Developed countries are aiming at ambulance emergency response time within eight minutes, but the Health Minister, Datuk Dr. Chua Soi Lek seemed quite happy with an ambulance response time of more than 30 minutes in his response to public criticisms over businesswoman Zara Davies Abdul Rahman’s traumatic experience in trying to get accident and emergency help from Hospital Tengku Ampuan Rahimah Klang to save an accident victim’s life near the Batu Tiga toll booth on Dec. 13 last year, but in vain. Read the rest of this entry »

The Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, in his capacity as Finance Minister should direct the Inland Revenue Board to stop invoking Income Tax Act Section 104 barring Malaysians from leaving the country for failing to pay income tax for business, tours and holidays when they have every intention of returning and not absconding from the country, and to seek the advice of the Attorney-General.

In her interview with New Sunday Times, the Chief Executive Officer and Director-General of Inland Revenue Board, Hasmah Abdullah advised 39,867 people who had been blacklisted as tax defaulters that they are barred from leaving the country for failing to pay income tax.

Holiday-makers who bought tickets at the recent Matta fair to go overseas are advised to visit the Inland Revenue Board before they board the plane.

This is most ludicrous and smacks of harassment and even blackmail — something which should not be associated with the public service.

Hasmah pointed out that under Section 104 of Income Tax 1967 (see below), individuals — locals or foreigners — would not be allowed to leave the country if they had not settled their income tax.

I believe that when Parliament passed Section 104 of Income Tax Act 1967 forty years ago, the intention was to prevent individuals, whether locals or foreigners, from evading income tax by absconding from the country — rather than to restrict their business or spoil their holidays plan.

I do not believe Parliament ever intended to prevent Malaysians with income tax problems from going to Singapore, Thailand or other overseas country whether for holidays or business. Read the rest of this entry »

Po Kuan blogs a heart-rending story in the continuing creation of a Malaysian diaspora which has happened to more than a million Malaysians in the past four decades — whether to uproot and migrate overseas and later to take up foreign citizenship.

Although human migration is a common phenomenon in human history and prehistory, the migration of over a million Malaysians in the past four decades was more because of push rather than pull-factors, with the country losing many of her best talents and human resources stunting and undermining Malaysia’s achievement of her full potential in national development and international competitiveness.

Malaysia on her 50th anniversary would have been a more developed, equitable and more competitive nation if more than a million of the most talented , enterprising and resourceful Malaysians had not been driven away from our shores in the past four decades because of unfair discriminatory nation-building policies and measures by myopic politicians.

After nearly four decades of such self-inflicted injuries, the heart-rending story which Po Kuan blogs should have come to an end with the abandonment of unfair discriminatory policies among Malaysians.

But this is not the case. It would appear that the “Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish” reflex and mentality to the problem of emigration of Malaysians, though not publicly stated as in the seventies and eighties, is still quite prevalent today.

There is not much that can be done about the pull-factors of human migration but a government which refuses to address the problem of the push-factors, which are the result of the failures of just and good governance, cannot claim to be a good government. Read the rest of this entry »