Letter to the Editor.
Leong Shen-Li’s front page analysis, ‘System Overhaul’ (Sunday Star 8 June) was spot on. For ages NGO activists in Malaysia have been demanding an effective, comprehensive public transport system. It is one of the reasons why some of us were critical of the Proton project in the mid-eighties. We realized that a ‘made in Malaysia’ car which had as its primary market the expanding Malaysian middle class would discourage policy makers from focusing upon the longstanding woes of the public transport sector.
Some of the proposals in Leong’s article can be implemented immediately. More trains and buses, special bus lanes, state support and subsidies for all public transport operators and a single regulatory authority are ideas that call for urgent action from the government. In this regard, taxis running on petrol should also be given fleet cards to reduce their financial burden.
It appears that since the huge petrol price hike in early 2007, the government has not done very much to fulfil its promise of improving the public transport system with the savings made from the earlier slash in subsidies. Star columnist, Wong Chun Wai, is right in urging the government to do more and to be more prudent with taxpayers’ money. Perhaps the government leadership should demonstrate its commitment to the people’s well-being at a time like this by rescinding the present policy of providing ‘free petrol’—in effect petrol paid for by the people—for vehicles used by the top brass in the public services. The savings from this could be channeled into upgrading our public transport system.
Chandra Muzaffar.
Kuala Lumpur.
8 June 2008.