COMMENT What is it about budgets that seem so not right?
Probably because we all come up with one, yet keeping to it seems almost close to impossible. A budget also reveals how much money we are willing to spend and especially in a government budget, no figure is good enough to satisfy all the demands from the voting public.
The yeas and nays will prevail long into the night; often times it seems we talk too long and too much about the budget than in actually carrying out the plans the money was set apart for. This we leave to the wise August House, as the voting public wait and watch to see if the money allocated ever reaches the masses.
And this is the problem I see in this budget. How much will actually reach the masses?
With all emphasis that Budget 2011 is a people’s budget, it is still, at the root of it, a development budget.
Huge amounts of taxpayers' money is allocated to build and create industrial areas, holiday resorts in remote areas, even a 100-storey mysterious “Warisan Merdeka” costing RM5 billion, to name a few.
A large part of the money is to be channelled into brick-and-mortar projects and vaguely named ideas intended to lift the income of the public. Money in the pocket is always a good thing for a select few who corral the bulk of the building projects in Sarawak.
What is needed, for Sarawak and the nation in general, is a social budget.
A budget that is weighted towards uplifting the general public and creating opportunities for all to excel. Though Budget 2011 has glimpses of a social budget, some areas are left to the imagination of lay people like us to cipher.
For example, the implementation of the 1Malaysia Training Programme by Community Colleges, National Youth Training Institutes, Giat Mara and Industrial Training Institutes to commence in January 2011 with an allocation of RM500 million.
It sounds like money well spent with emphasis on training and education, yet the biggest question is, what is the 1Malaysia Training Programme?
The mysterious project
And then, there is this mysterious 100-storey Warisan Merdeka costing RM5 billion. Is this a landmark to show-case Malaysia or a mere attempt at leaving behind a monument to one’s own name? Because, RM5 billion can be put to better use, building basic infrastructure in the interior of Sarawak. What or how would Project Warisan Merdeka benefit the people? A radical idea would be to take RM27 million and turn the roughly 27 million Malaysians into millionaires by giving each and every Malaysian a million ringgit. And RM27 million is a small fraction of the RM5 billion allocated to create a landmark. Are not the Petronas Twin Towers good enough?
And if Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak's ultimate goal is to increase the income bracket per Malaysian, then why was minimum wage left out?
No doubt it will increase the over-head for the government in terms of basic wages for its civil servants but in the long run, it puts money directly into the hands of working Malaysians. It would encourage Malaysians to seek employment, since the benefits of working are clearly visible in the form of ringgit notes in their wallets.
But putting money into the hands of everyday working Malaysians is not enough, when the cost of living is on a continuous rise. This in itself is pushing more and more Malaysians into a state of financial inadequacy. Rural folks in Sarawak feel this pinch the most, as the cost of products rises the further inland you go. Looking through the budget, there was no mention of the fuel subsidy. And no news is bad news indeed.
So what good is a people-friendly budget when it leads to a higher cost of living? The budget may create an atmosphere for better living but at a price few Malaysians will ever be able to afford. And this is the irony hitting those living in Sarawak.
We may have the best-looking buildings or cheapest tolls, but they are only confined to Peninsular Malaysia while those living in the longhouses of rural Sarawak struggle to keep their native lands from being raped by timber companies making a quick buck.
For right now, try explaining the need to spend RM5 billion on a new landmark when seven longhouses in the Sebangan/Sebuyau area are fighting for dear life to keep their lands from being plundered by a company with ties to the current establishment.
What use is a people-friendly budget when the Land and Survey Department and the Forestry Department seem to contradict each other on the status of the Sebangan/Sebuyau native customary lands?
What is really needed is not a people-friendly budget, which is friendly to people in the construction business but rather a social budget that puts taxpayers' money back into the hands of taxpayers.
It is too soon to rejoice over the fact that Malaysians can now own more than one handphone, but I would rejoice at the end of 2011 when I can clearly see in actual numbers and figures that Malaysians are truly high-income earners.
Maclean Patrick is a webmaster in Sarawak
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