Hermit Hornbill, Sarawak News - Sunday, July 13, 2008 10:00 - 0 Comments

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Hard times ahead

BY now, the rippling crippling effect of the fuel price hike would have spread to all corners of Sarawak and to all levels of society.

I do my own marketing at the wet market, the local provision store, and occasionally, the supermarket. It is frightening to see how the retail prices of daily necessities leap-frogged in recent weeks.

Are the small businessmen, the hawkers, and the store-keepers profiteering from this wave of price hikes? I doubt it, since I know them for a long time, and can vouch for their business ethics. Besides, they all look grim, their wrinkles outnumbering those on an old bitter gourd, because business is down, and customers are pinching pennies. If you ask them,they will tell you they are paying more to their suppliers and whole-sellers, and they are terrified of closing shop.

At the same time, any request for wage increases from the public and private sectors is unlikely to be entertained. When the whole world and the Asian region look set for very choppy economic sea ahead, the knee-jerk reaction from governments and the corporate sector is to cut cost.

Stagnant wages and rising costs of living makes for a very unhappy nation. The psychic hair at the back of my head tell me the masses are seething with helpless anger, especially when top politicians are more interested in all kinds of dirty intrigues than in the plight of the long-suffering people.

I know people in high places harangue us about the need to change our lifestyle in order to cop with this new round of economic crisis. They can talk; they are rich enough. What they do not know is that millions of Malaysians are in debt, and they often live from hand to mouth. Changing lifestyle may mean going hungry for some people at the bottom of the pile.

Suddenly, people are quite interested in the definition of poverty again. According to official sources, the poverty level in Sarawak is measured in terms of a monthly household income of RM777. (The figure for Sabah is RM886.) We know that countless rural households do not have that kind of cash income, although, living on their own land, they have food supply from the jungle and the rivers that are denied to urban household.

A Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department revealed in Parliament last month that one quarter of Malaysian households has a monthly income of less than RM1,500, and had also announced that the government has reclassified all families with less than a monthly cash income of RM2,000 as poor. By those criteria, how many Sarawak households are really poor? How many belong to the hard-core poor? And how are they going to cope with this austere future ahead?

The middle-class urban wage earners are not doing that well either. Most of them work at a job with a fixed monthly salary. They are more than likely burdened with a long-term housing loan and a short-term car loan. In the modern context, you cannot live and work without a car, what with our messy inefficient and inconvenient public transport system. That will also require annual road tax and car insurance payment. On top of that, there are expenses incurred in monthly servicing, the odd major repairs, petrol, and parking. The house and the car tie down an employee to a miserable job for life in many cases.

Apart from the household bills, children’s education also eats away any family’s disposable income. If there are two or three children going to school, the payment for school and miscellaneous fees, school inform and school bags, books and other examination related materials, tuition, and school bus service, would all add up to a small fortune. If you have a child studying overseas, then only God can help you.

When the increase in the price of petrol suddenly descends upon Sarawakians, the middle class is hard put to making ends meet. They will try to cut back on expenses, like eating out, or entertainment. Some will try to get a second job, but in the dismal economic climate that prevails in Sarawak, getting hired in one’s spare time is easier said than done.

In a time of rampant inflation, those middle-class Sarawakians hovering on the edge will simply slide into poverty.

Those worst hit by this tsunami of inflation are the marginalised groups, the disabled, the single mothers, and individuals stricken with debilitating diseases. The most forgotten are the aged.

According to the Malaysian National Census, 1.8 million Malaysians or seven per cent of our total population are aged 60 and above in 2007. This figure is expected to increase to 3.6 million (11 per cent) by 2020.

About 300,000 of these are ex-civil servants and receive a government pension which is half the amount of their last-drawn salary. Others live off their EPF payout, income from their investment, if any, and perhaps contribution from their children.

Their condition in these times of high cost of living is dire.

Those who worked in the clerical and support staff in the government service were paid RM300 to RM600 a month. That means their pension would come up to a paltry sum of RM150 to RM300 per month. How can any one live a decent life on that kind of income?

Fortunately for old Malaysians, most people have strong family values, and children by and large help to support their ageing parents, where they can. Where they cannot, and where senior citizens are left to fend for themselves, one shudder to think of the deprivation, the anguish, and the depression of their sunset years after having served their country one way or another for a lifetime.

The most serious problem facing old people is medical care. Inevitably, when one gets old, one is beset with old kinds of aches and pain. I cannot think of any friend of mine above the age of 60 who is not suffering from one or more of the diseases that haunt the aged, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart condition, arthritis, insomnia, asthma, and so on. These diseases are not always life-threatening, but they make life miserable, and if left untreated, would turn very nasty indeed.

What people seldom talk about is that the costs of diagnosis and medical treatment in both private and public hospitals have gone up sky-high. This is very much so for pensioners living on their fixed limited income.

For instance, old people suffering from diabetes or high-blood pressure have to take certain drugs everyday until the day they die. These drugs cost a fortune if the patients purchase them at the private clinic or the neighbourhood pharmacy. Their only option is to get them free or at a nominal charge in government hospitals.

But you know our government hospitals. They are forever packed from wall to wall and to the brim with sick people of all ages. For the frail senior citizens to wait for those interminable hours in that kind of uncomfortable noisy and confusing surrounding, the experience in the waiting room will bring on spasms of physical trauma!

I would think that it would be humane if in every hospital and in every waiting room, there is an express lane for anyone above the age of 60. But you know how it is. The public health service is a typical bureaucracy; it is not very sensitive to specific needs of categories of patients.

If the senior citizen has to undergo surgery that requires intensive prolonged and expensive post-operative care, the financial burden would be even greater. The patient may survive the medical treatment, but he may not survive the poverty after that. One cannot blame the patient to think that it is better to just die off, rather than be treated.

The answer is to have some kind of public insurance scheme for everyone; this sort of health insurance has worked well in more advanced countries, though the problem of abuse has always existed there. Alternatively, there should be some sort of public health insurance for senior citizens, but then again, like a typical Third World nation, Malaysia has always been slow on social welfare for her less fortunate citizens.

A columnist’s job is bear witness to history. The story of the poor and the aged may not be sexy, but they need to be told.