Prices of goods in Sabah will shoot up with un-remedied minimum wage, says Star

Jalibin Paidi, STAR Divisional Head for Ranau

RANAU :  Consumers in Sabah should expect some unpleasant surprises as the new year sets in with the Government's plan to implement the minimum wage of RM800 per month across the board.

The direct immediate effect of this minimum wage policy, to be in force from January 2013, are an increase of production cost for all employers in the state, already burdened with the highest cost of living in Malaysia.

Please expect increases of prices of goods and services, anything from 20% to even 200% as the employers would definitely pass the cost to consumers at large.

 

Which will it be: Najib or Umno?

Dissatisfied Umno members believe Najib Tun Razak and
Rosmah Mansor are the party's "main liabilities"
that threaten the future of Umno.

Source

The recent 66th Umno general assembly sent out clear signs of increasing dissatisfaction among delegates with Najib Tun Razak’s leadership and that a decision must be made before the 13th general election.

Since Najib took over from Abdullah Ahmad Badawi as PM in early 2009, the former’s leadership has been directionless. He has been inconsistent and indecisive with his policies.

Though Najib is not as weak as his predecessor, he has nothing better to offer – no good leadership traits and no political and economic models on nation-building.

Umno members, from top to bottom, are very concerned about the party’s future.

We don’t need Malayan leaders to preach unity

Leaders from Malaya should not teach Sabahans what is
the meaning of racial harmony as we in Sabah have had
the most harmonious relationship, says Yong Teck Lee.

By Luke Rintod of FMT

KOTA BELUD: Sabah Progressive Party president Yong Teck Lee has condemned political leaders from Peninsular Malaysia, including from the Pakatan Rakyat, who come to Sabah lecturing to the local people on how to unite and not be racial.

“Leaders from Malaya should not teach Sabahans what is the meaning of racial harmony as we in Sabah have had the most harmonious relationship,” he said.

“DAP leaders like Selangor Speaker Teng Cheng Kim who came to Sandakan recently should not tell us how to unite. It is in the peninsula that racial disharmony is prevalent,” Yong said in his speech at a family gathering of one of SAPP’s leaders in Kg Kebayau near here yesterday.

Jangan pandang rendah orang Sabah

Sumber

Kami tukar Usno, kami tukar Berjaya, kami tukar PBS,
kata seorang pemandu teksi rakyat Sabah.

PETALING JAYA: Ristol Nebeng agak kecewa kerana masih ramai rakyat Malaysia yang menganggap rakyat Sabah masih tidak matang berpolitik serta muda dibeli dengan janji-janji manis dalam pilihanraya yang bakal menjelang tiba.

Pemandu teksi yang berasal dari Sandakan ini memberitahu bahawa anggapan sedemikian sudah lama dilemparkan oleh pendududk dari Semenanjung termasuk rakan-rakannya sendiri.

Ristol berusia dalam lingkungan 40 tahun bekerja sebagai pemandu teksi sejak 15 tahun dan sekarang tnggal di Cheras di Kuala Lumpur. Beliau sudah berkeluarga dan mempunyai lima anak antara 10 dan 20 tahun. Isterinya berasal dari Tawau, sabah.

Of US President Harry Truman and Australian Bob Menzies

Thought you'd enjoy this!
It's one you want your Children and Grandchildren to read.

They won't believe this happened, but it DID.

Harry & Bess
(This seems unreal.)

Harry Truman was a different kind of President. He probably made as many, or more important decisions regarding our nation's history as any of the other 42 Presidents preceding him. However, a measure of his greatness may rest on what he did after he left the White House.

Neither BN nor Pakatan good for Sabah, S’wak

Declassified documents pertinent to Borneo, found in
the British archives, indicate that Putrajaya's
policies may be running foul of the unwritten
constitution of Malaysia.

byJoe Fernandez

Former Sabah Chief Minister Mohd Harris Salleh has never failed to appear from time to time as a bundle of contradictions to the extent of even embarrassing his own party leaders.

Harris, in his defence, may be said to mean well and even acting in good faith but often this argument is nothing more than the proverbial fig-leaf.

The man simply can’t be allowed to get away with it too many times. It creates not just bad but dangerous precedents. Both Harris and former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad appear to be birds of a feather in more ways than one.

However Harris isn’t even facing the remotest danger of being hauled up by Umno — assuming he’s still a member of the party given his penchant for sponsoring mosquito parties including Usno 2006 which is awaiting “registration” — on disciplinary charges for bringing it into public disrepute. This Mother of All Charges, with apologies to Saddam Hussein, is sure to cook anyone’s goose for good.

Confidence tricks in Sabah politics

Former Chief Minister Harris Salleh's latest comments
are indicative of how disengaged Sabah leaders, both
past and present, are from the man on the street.

KOTA KINABALU: Ask almost anyone in Sabah, especially those in the Chinese business community, and they’ll tell you the state’s economy is in a bad way and will be so for the foreseeable future.

Sabah’s prized assets are in greedy hands. Its golden crop – oil palm – is losing its lustre in the commodities market, its tourism lure is messy, the prices of goods and services have gone up, property prices have sky-rocketed and where jobs are available wages are low and the infrastructure remains creaky and basic.

With all this pointing to deepening economic woes, you’d think that the state’s politicians who have rarely been so unpopular would be cautious about throwing stones at glass houses that they are living in. But no, its still business as usual.

Stop PR stunts, get real with Christians

An NGO says this Christmas is the time for Najib
to ponder and really hear the Christians on the
issue of fairness and justice.

By Luke Rintod of FMT

KOTA KINABALU: Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak has been asked to stop his “public relations stunts” and instead deal with the biased treatment his federal administration has meted out to Christians in Sabah and Sarawak.

Demanding that Najib “walk his talk”, a local NGO, Borneo’s Plight in Malaysia Foundation (BoPiMaFo), said the PM’s “nice words” in his Christmas message yesterday, rang “hollow as far as sincerity and truth is concerned” when compared to the “real situation” in Malaysia affecting Christians.

The foundation’s president Daniel Jambun said that in Sabah especially, the “Christian community continued to be increasingly marginalised and victimised by loads of actions from Najib’s ruling party Umno.”

Sabah immigration dishing-out Mykads?

It apparently takes only two hours to process a
new Mykad at the Immigration Department in Sabah's
Federal Administrative Complex, claims DAP.

By Queville To

KOTA KINABALU: Why is the Immigration Department in Sabah processing new Mykads and change of addresses? And when did the National Registration Department (NRD) appoint the Immigration Department to handle Mykads in Sabah?

Posing these question, Sabah DAP said it was tipped off by the members of the public that the process of changing to the new MyKads and address could be done at the Immigration Department in the Federal Administrative Complex here and that the procedure took only two hours.

“It is being done at the Immigration Department, which is suppose to only handle passport and work pass. Since when is the Immigration Department also doing the job of the National Registration Department?”  the party’s Tanjung Aru chief, David Chong Ket Sui asked.

Dealing with the Borneo Agenda

Is it any wonder that poverty is still prevalent
in the resource rich states of Sabah and Sarawak
after 45 years in Malaysia?

History will tell us that alliances between states are entered into to serve strategic, economic and the national interest of their people.

More often than not these alliances are driven by political leaders who dream of greater glory and national advancement that the sum of such an alliance may bring.

History will also tell us that no nation can survive an alliance with another for too long when the interest of its people are exploited and taken advantage of by the another.

Such is the situation that the people of Sabah and Sarawak now feel they are in – the same Sabah and Sarawak that joined with Singapore and Malaya to form that new nation of Malaysia.