Ku Nan To Wahid : Urban Malays In Deep Stuff

The Minister in the PM's department Ibn Waraq Wahid Omar came out and said that the median household income in Malaysia was RM5900 per month.  Many people, including me, found this very hard to believe. 

It only makes sense if you add Syed Mokhtar's income, Ananda Krishnan plus a few other billionaires' incomes.

A couple of days ago Ku Nan the FT UMNO boss said the following:

• lowest price for housing unit in KL is about RM300,000 
• average urban Malay can (only) afford below RM150,000
• Malays in FT own only 93,000 units of property, 21.7%
• most cannot afford sky-high prices of houses & apartments in KL
• Umno and gomen need to urgently address their plight
• bitter fact faced by Malays & needs to be addressed
• > 42,000 or 90% of those applying to rent or buy are Malays
• average monthly income of Malay family in FT was RM2k - RM3k a mth
• classifies most of them as urban poor
• Umno does not want to see situation continuing into future  (Oops !! Too late)
• widening ownership and narrowing income of Malays with other races is part of agenda

And what exactly is Ku Nan's suggestion to solve this problem? 

• i.  strengthening the position of Islam
• ii. strengthening Barisan Nasional
• iii. reaching out to the youths and professionals and 
• iv. solving the people's problems

Well, almost all the Islamic countries are either collapsing or entering into the Club of Doom. So I dont know exactly how much 'strengthening the position of Islam' is going to help.

As for the BN, well the BN has been in power since 1957.  Since Dr Mahathir left the country has been going down, down and down. 

Yesterday I was buying super excellent nasi kukus from a warong. The nice guys at the warong straight away started talking politics to me. The younger guy just blurted out, 'susah nak buang kerajaan'.  

These guys were wearing shorts. So they were not exactly the PAS type (tabley pakai shorts, tunjuk aurat). 

Trying to project the image of a law abiding citizen,  I just said, 'kena tunggu pilihanraya'.

The younger guy replied, 'lama sangat'.   

I did laugh. It was funny - at that time. But people are not stupid. They can see. Most of all they realise that they are in hardship. This is the biggest bugbear. People realise they are in hardship.

Do you know that despite the high house prices there are people who are ready and willing to buy houses. But the banks have been told by Bank Negara to tighten credit. 

Never tighten credit for housebuyers. Tighten credit for housing developers. 

As it is now, housing developers can still get loans. So they build houses. Then the houses cannot be sold becaue Bank Negara has tightened housing loans for house buyers.  So houses do not get sold. The gomen is sleeping on this one. 

So gomen policy creates hardship for the economy. When that happens the money does not flow. The economy drags down and grinds down. 

And the first to suffer are the wage earners. Those on piecemeal rates (ada). Those who are daily paid (ada). The SMEs. It goes on down the line.


As for Ku Nan's points ii and iii, well I dont know what that means.