Opposition stunned by massive fuel price hike

Opposition stunned by massive fuel price hike

KUALA LUMPUR, June 5 ─ Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's announcement of a fuel price hike yesterday was met with great consternation and dismay by Opposition members.

Shah Alam MP Khalid Abdul Samad, from PAS, did not mince his words. Calling the government a "hopeless bunch", he expressed his disappointment with the Cabinet's new subsidy mechanism.

"I'm stunned. I was expecting a better deal. I think it's very sad, very disappointing. I don't think the current administration knows what they're doing. I can understand if it's because of hoarding, but the point is that the (price) jump is very sudden and extreme when the people's salaries have not changed and the public transport (system) has not improved.

"This has put the burden of world market prices on the common people while they are pretending that there is no benefit to the nation. I simply cannot understand this (new subsidy) mechanism. It's completely ridiculous," said Khalid, who was inundated with phone calls from his anxious constituents the whole afternoon.

"(Abdullah) has done it again. Last time, it was a 30 per cent increase overnight. Now, it's a 78-sen increase. It's as though there is no benefit to them or to Petronas. As an oil-exporting nation, I don't understand why (the government is taking such measures) when we are selling to ourselves," he said.

Khalid observed that in other oil-producing countries such as Bahrain, the government not only kept petrol prices low, at 80 sen a litre, but also allocated each family RM4,000 a year to cope with the rising costs of other items such as food.

He said the Opposition coalition had raised the issue in Parliament at its just-concluded first sitting this year.

The Pakatan Rakyat had suggested that fuel prices be floated at market prices but that the government give the money that would have been saved on subsidies back to the people to cope with the rising living costs, similar to what was being practised by the Bahrain government.

Khalid predicted that the fuel price hike would cause havoc among the various businesses in the country, a view that was shared by his Opposition ally from the DAP, Liew Chin Tong, the Bukit Bendera MP.

"The hike is going to cause hardship," Liew warned.

He said the massive savings from the subsidies ─ which Second Finance Minister Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Yakcop reckoned would total RM5 billion a year ─ could be better served by "immediately go(ing) into improving public transport". – The Malaysian Insider