ZURAIDA TICKS OFF WEALTHY ROHANI: Try living on RM900 a month for yourself & family before you talk

Minister for Women, Family and Community Development, Datuk Seri Rohani Abdul Karim has certainly never lived the life of a wage earner. Wanita Keadilan challenges her to live 30-days as a woman who earns the minimum wage of RM900 together with her existing family and then decide at the end of 30 days whether or not she would still try to convince other people to have more children when there are high living costs and financial worries on the mind.

Wanita Keadilan is of the opinion that the family must be ready for the additional responsibilities and be financially stable before considering more children. This is to avoid further problems in the future.

It is a fact that birthrates are declining but the quality of life must maintain or improve. Instead of advising families to “not focus too much on the quality of life”, the government should take the responsibility to ensure that Malaysian’s standard of living gets better and better. Our South-east Asian countries are now doing much better than us in all areas. For instance, South Korea is already way ahead of us with brands such as Samsung, LG, Hyundai and Kia making its name worldwide. What happened to Proton? Fifty-eight years after independence, we still lag behind in terms of economy, education, human rights and equality.

Rohani Abdul Karim

Although the national birthrate needs some attention, the right way and the only way to do it is to stop corruption so that our national finances are at a healthy level. A naturally wealthy nation like Malaysia should amply provide for all citizens, not for just a few cronies. BR1M is just hogwash. If the government was really serious, then 50% of BR1M should be deposited into the housewives’ accounts.

In fact, since a lot of expenses are incurred during births and the subsequent years for bringing up a child, perhaps the government should even look into subsidizing new births with some allocation to the parents, similar to the Selangor State programme TAWAS Although this might be a good idea, Wanita Keadilan is sure the BN government will not even consider it as the GST is applicable to even infants on basic items such as milk powder.

Last but not least, Wanita Keadilan hopes that Datuk Rohani will take up the challenge as proposed above.

YB Zuraida Kamaruddin

Ahli Parlimen Ampang

Ketua Wanita Keadilan