COME ON NANCY! Your denial mode makes you & BN the WORST govt the people could have

I refer to Nancy Shukri’s statement published in Malaysiakini yesterday.

Nancy’s statement is a clear indication that she does not understand the problems of the working class. The minimum wage was introduced in January 2013 - RM900 for Peninsular Malaysia and RM800 for Sabah and Sarawak. This, according to Prime Minister Najib, is supposed to ‘guarantee an income that lifts people out of poverty and helps ensure that they can meet the rising cost of living’.

Assuming as Nancy claimed, that she and her friends enjoyed six cups of tea in Kuching for RM2 each and asking people if that was expensive, my answer to her is ‘Yes’.

For a minimum wage earner in Kuching, he only receives RM26 per day. Two cups of tea a day would already cost him RM4 or 15% of his salary. How is that possibly affordable? How about food, clothing, transportation and communication, rent, utility and medical bills, toiletries, other necessities and dependents?

Although the Malaysian Department of Statistics revealed that only 1.7% of the Malaysians are considered poor, the method used to arrive at this conclusion is unknown. It was widely reported that the Malaysian average household income increased to RM5,742 in 2012.

We get a nice and pompous figure, but does that reflect the actual situation?

Shop in Petronas, Mydin

Nancy also advised people to shop in Petronas and Mydin citing that they have not increased their prices. Everybody knows that Petronas prices are slightly higher and more expensive than the usual grocery stores. Although Mydin might be a good option, still, not everybody has access to Mydin.

The problem also does not lie with the middleman. Everyone is having a tough time and the reason is simply because the government raised petrol prices, sugar prices and toll prices. This in turn, created a chain reaction where prices of all essential and non-essential items go up.

Although KR1M is a government initiative, it is obvious that Nancy failed to mention it as an option to buy cheaper goods. Keadilan had revealed in 2012 that the quality of the goods provided by KR1M fall below expectations and the prices uneconomical. The supplier to KR1M coincidentally is Mydin.

I hope that Nancy takes the trouble to connect with the ground. Affordability is not about where to get RM1 or RM2 chili. Prices of goods are a matter of supply and demand but when prices of petrol and daily necessities go up, it becomes the government’s responsibility to stop the ripple effects. It is absurd to ask someone to plant his own vegetables when people cannot even afford a landed property.

A good government seeks to ease the burden of the people, not add to it.

YB Zuraida Kamaruddin, Member of Parliament for AMPANG, Chief of Wanita KEADILAN