Please-Iah Rakyat: Moving People Matters

POSTED ON JUNE 6, 2017 BY ADMIN

Fast and Carbonless Electric Ride

Seeking employment in Malaysia is not a problem, but getting to work every day is! 

Earning a respectable remuneration is the critical issue that keeps the locals away from jobs that currently employ foreigners. In the larger metropolitan business hubs where the opportunities of employment are better, the equation of time, distance and money just do not balance. The distances that separate homes from workplaces, will for many show their income range. The reason for this is that it is cheaper to live further away from the city, and which boils down to travelling time and money spent on it by them. Their option is to either commute daily from home or to share accommodation to be closer to work, saving time and money, which is alright, only if one is single.

Foreigners are sardine packed into low-cost accommodations and are shuttled to work in buses in an almost a captive arrangement, saving costs for employers. This gives employers leverage in capitalising profits while keeping wages low and also an apparatus to explore avenues to further exploit an unrepresented labour force to their benefit.

The local average income earner will need to realistically look at his transportation resources before accepting gainful employment. They would have to be selective in choosing jobs which are influenced by time and the economics of travelling to and fro from home. The myth about laziness and reluctance in seeking employment has long been busted because it is known that Malaysian employers actually prefer foreign labour than to encourage local participation. 

People who live out of the city spend more than twelve hours working including travelling on a good and dry day. Malaysians who work in the cities are deprived of having enough time for themselves or for their families, making this the root cause of negative impacts on their lives. Most people choose to opt to invest in a motorcycle rather than rely on public transportation, which is considered unreliable and cars being practically unaffordable. All this makes blue collared employment non-lucrative for many Malaysians.

Over 90 percent of the population in Japan lives in sprawling urban areas, Tokyo and other centres are made accessible to the working masses by high speed and efficient transportation network. The clear foresight of moving the masses to work and back by the Japanese administrators was in the blueprint from the beginning of modernisation and made operational more than four decades ago. The blue collars are compensated for their travel by their employers as an incentive to enhance productivity and there is definitely no import of labour in Japan. 

The initiative taken to develop mass transportation seriously is a complacency the Federal government has seen to shed since the last general elections. Owing to a tumultuous political landscape and with strong opposition pressure, the government has begun to yield results in seriously taking mass transportation to a different level. Even if there is much more to be accomplished by the current administrators of our country, we have to appreciate their effort in developing the public transportation network and their continued efforts to take the Rakyat places by moving them swiftly to their destinations. 

Just like the Singaporeans,  the Japanese and people of many advanced Nations who travel by public transportation system; Malaysians too, have now begun leaving their cars at home to take the fast and Carbonless electric rides to work. 

To plan and schedule to reach a destination in a specified time without any obstacles or eventualities to factor in, from start to finish and running like clockwork is exactly what the citizens of a success-oriented Nation would want. 

Moving People Matters.

 EDit@pls-Iah Rakyat

Picture courtesy FMT