COMMENT | Budget 2021: Missing the forest for the trees?

COMMENT | There are a few aspects of Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz Budget 2021 speech that I found disconcerting.

The first was that my wife and I are both going to receive one-off payments of RM300 each as we are government pensioners. Does the government have a surplus of funds such that it can reward people like us who have not suffered any loss in income?

Shouldn’t finite government funds be focused on those whose income has been ravaged by the pandemic and the recession?

The women working as daily paid helpers in restaurants, the retrenched workers from hotels and tourism companies, the operators of stalls in the pasar malams around the country, school canteen operators and others like them - these are the people whose lives have been upended by the pandemic.

Some of them are facing problems putting food on the table. Shouldn’t they be the main recipients of government support?...