ELAUN OH ELAUN..

Salam

For the past two or three weeks there is a really strong wind of news that the allowances for the government servants will be reduced or demolished namely the COLA and the housing allowance. In the net, many comments posted by mainly the one whom is affected directly by this possible new progress or for many of them: regress and redressed.

Of course, when this kind of news circulating, there are a lots of disgruntled and grumbling people on the ground and of course it is seen as something that very unpopular move by the current government. While there are a lots of talks regarding the government trying to save money, no one will expect that their own income will be cut to save the money for the sake of the government. This kind of 'prudent spending' by the government will surely make most of the people unhappy on top of the generalized reduce of budget especially in the critical and important area namely the health and education (except for the newly launched 'permata negara' program which is spearheaded by non other than the wife of our prime minister)

Unhappy is not actually the correct words because the ill feeling goes deeper than that. While almost everything that is essential is going up in price, no one will expect their salary will be cut instead of being raised up. But the rot should stop fast. As many Malaysian knows that our country is running with a deficit budget for a record 13 years on the road way back to at least 1997. Deficit budget means that every year we are running in negative not having money for the future but instead having building debt on the way.

Is this the global phenomenon? No. our neighbors in the ASEAN country is having a better record than us. Are we suppose to be like them? Yes because we are a net petroleum exporter on top of rubber and palm oil. We are supposedly making profits every time this commodities increase in market values. Where the profit goes than? The most comfortable answer is we are using the money for subsidies and bla..bla..bla..

So why do we need to cut/reduce or take back the allowances of the government servants? The answer is simple. Firstly: allowances is not the servant's downright privilege. It is up to the government whether to pay them or not. Secondly: They are supposedly the one to be sacrificed first for the sake of the general rakyat. Of course many of the people out side the circle will be more than happy to hear this news because this government servants is a ready made scapegoat for everything inefficient about the government. Blaming the politician or the minister? Forget it. Thirdly: They have no where to run. No choice. Fourth: Give them a bonus of a month or two end of the year and a number of them will be more than happy and totally forget about this. Sound familiar? Malaysian mudah lupa.

Does this thing will happen? Few of my colleague already read the circular in other ministry regarding the reduction/taking back the COLA. There is still possibility that this is not true or maybe they are trying to test the reaction by sending the rumor to see how the people react. And expertly allay the fear by tracking back or maybe some increment. Is it possible? Increment? unlikely.

Ready for a brace of more and more stingy spending than. Be more prudent and be more careful when spending because we will never know what is in the bag for us. Nothing is ours in the world so instead of cursing and shouting to the deaf ear, why not we turn to the ever and forever will listen to you. Allah.

Do pray that Allah will help us to make sure that in the near future we will never need to face with this efficiently inefficient governor ever again. May Allah show us the way.