YOURSAY | Those who reap rewards as prices soar

YOURSAY | ‘It is the way businesses are conducted in Malaysia.’

COMMENT | Is middle person the pied piper leading us to increased prices?

OCT: The middlemen concept has been there for many, many years. Most of the rakyat know about it. It is the way businesses are conducted in Malaysia.

Just look at the approved permits (APs) for cars. Where in the world can you sell cars without any showrooms?

Another good example is taxi permits. There was a well-known politician who was the king of taxi permits.

These middlemen don’t add value to the services or products. They increase the cost of services/products.

The government thinks this is the best way to help the majority race to compete for businesses with the non-Malays. However, it has negative effects. It makes the majority race uncompetitive, without real skills and complacent.

Their only advantage is the network connection with politicians. They help these politicians win elections and, in return, the politicians reward them. Their motto is “You help me, I help you.”

Falcon: Malaysiakini columnist R Nadeswaran, you are right. After all, some of us have been addressing these issues for most of our lives.

We are old, tired and angry! We have been on the frontline, in the dark trenches, taking both friendly and enemy fire, and despite injury, out in the open trying to seek interventions and holistic responses.

Nothing changed for 47 years. It is the same old response vis a vis old wine in new bottles, today with religious tags, an attempt to 'religionise' to speak to the heartland which is poor, pathetic and brain dead.

From the onset, the approach is wrong. Those on top have absolutely no clue how the marketplace operates. They have never gone to bed hungry.

Warriors on the ground know the truth from falsehood. We have been addressing these concerns for far too long to be fooled again.

But for politicians, those writing their scripts show that deception, delusion and denial must go on despite knowing the truth. This is a failed state response. The comments here in Malaysiakini show no one is fooled.

KK Semenyih: Spot on, Nadeswaran. Thank you for highlighting these to the clueless task force (Special Jihad Task Force to Tackle Inflation).

I agree with you, as I'm very familiar with the issues faced by the Cameron Highlands farmers (I provided technical support to the farmers voluntarily for many years until I retired from service).

I was there when the National Security Council was destroying productive farms just because they were thought to be illegal, although not all of them were.

My thoughts were that it was a crime to destroy productive farms. If they are illegal (mainly due to failure in enforcement), they should be slapped with a hefty fine, regulated, and allowed to continue producing food for the nation.

The regulatory framework is non-existence in Cameron Highlands and enforcement is usually a knee-jerk reaction.

Farming requires long-term planning to ensure return on investment (ROI), but with short-term leases, farmers are not able to plan long-term, thus directly affecting investment and productivity.

BluePanther4725: This ridiculously named ‘Jihad Task Force to Tackle Inflation’ is just another useless venture.

The middlemen are the corrupted politicians' cronies who are given licences and the authority to plunder, impose exorbitant rent, control imports and exports, demand bribes and monopolise the market.

The problem with our poor economy, high inflation and weak ringgit are all caused by this incompetent and corrupted Perikatan Nasional/BN government.

The government wanted to take away the subsidies for our essential food items so that they could plunder even more. Due to their laziness and incompetency, our highly-paid bloated bunch of ministers are unable to improve our economy or attract new reputable investors.

The only way to save our country and our livelihood is to get rid of this corrupted and parasitic PN/BN government as they are the root of our problem.

Fed Up Bodoh Sombong: The middlemen include the ministers, chairpersons of government-linked companies (GLC), migrant workers permit processing units and top civil servants who are not productive yet are paid high salaries.

Any government employee or politician who draws ridiculous fees cannot be justified. These vultures and sharks reap off the fat and leave the bones to the rakyat.

How are we to survive except to raise prices? There is no need to study and have working lunches if this is not dealt with first.

Vgeorgemy: GLCs, government licensing bodies and rent-seeking cronies are the largest go-betweens that increase the cost of doing business.

We only need to look into government procurement policies to identify layers of intermediaries who are acting like cartels. These people are the financial products of these cartels.

The Department of Statistics Malaysia has detailed pricing studies that can be accessed from its website if the regime wants to have a solution to the problems faced by the rakyat.

They are the ones that had a history of appointing highly-paid committee members to look away from the issues of the day.

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