LettersOPINION

Kudos to Ipoh Echo…Keep Up the Good Work!

I happened to bump into your free copy of newspaper in Ipoh recently; back home to celebrate Lunar New Year. I found some older editions at a barber shop. While waiting for my turn, I just have some time to browse through your newspaper issue 250 and found that interesting with articles concerning Ipoh and Perak in general.

One article titled A Bright 2017? by Fathol Zaman Bukhari is particularly interesting which really highlighted the reality of life and the current ‘dire’ situation we are all facing while those who are holding the power keep giving us all a false sense of security and wellness. As you have highlighted the ever shrinking Ringgit is just one of them. Since late last year the Governor of BNM, Muhd. Ibrahim, keeps announcing that the Ringgit would rebound early this year, the latest in tandem with the rebound of oil prices. This was what I learnt from the RTM news broadcast.

Unfortunately, in reality this is not the case…..the Ringgit keeps sliding down (at least against the US or Sing Dollar) while petrol prices are going up and up. (Each time up 20 sen but if it’s down, only 5 sen) I wonder what formula they use to calculate the oil price or is it just a mumbo jumbo magic figure that comes up to suit them. I have written to the KPDNKK to request for this monthly oil price formula to be published and how they arrived at the figure but until now no avail. There should be transparency in this…don’t you agree?

Back to the Ringgit issue, now I heard that they forecast the recovery in 4th quarter of the year, pushing back the time. I bet this will never happen. If miracles happen, it may be just a very brief relief only before resuming the downtrend. Just look at the long-term historical trend, once it was down, it would be very hard to climb up. You can see the chart is going south all the way.

A shrinking currency and high cost of inflation creeping up are really a double whammy for the rakyat…sigh…. This hasn’t taken into account the possibility of the Government raising various other taxes…quit rent, assessment, water, etc. These are all possibilities…Horrible!

A Disgruntled Man on the Street

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