(Petaling Jaya, Thursday): The failure of the Cabinet meeting yesterday to come out with a stand on the proposal for a billion-ringgit stabilisation fund to help the two million Malaysians hard hit by the palm oil price crisis is most disappointing.
Last Friday, I had criticised the Cabinet for being most irresponsible and remiss in failing to place this urgent matter as an important item of its agenda when it met two days earlier.
Agriculture Minister Datuk Effendi Norwawi told reporters yesterday that the Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi had raised the issue of the problems faced by oil palm smallholders as a result of the low price of the commodity at the Cabinet meeting yesterday.
Effendi said: “The matter received attention and there were discussions.
Several suggestions were made and would be looked into for a decision to
be made."
The failure of the Cabinet to come out with an integrated plan incorporating
a billion-ringit stabilisation fund to help some two million people who
had been hard hit for more than a year by the plunge of palm oil price
is proof of the insensitivity of UMNO Ministers to rural poverty
and hardships as compared to their great protectiveness for a handful of
select tycoons like Halim Saad and Tajuddin Ramli who individually
could receive government mega-bailouts running into billions of ringgit.
The government should suspend these mega-bailouts like the RM1.79 billion buyout of Tan Sri Tajudin Ramli's 29.09 per cent stake in MAS through Naluri, the RM6 billion bailouts for the two LRT companies, STAR and PUTRA and now the necessity to bailout the RM1.4 billion Time dotCom's IPO fiasco as a result of 75 per cent undersubscription as the monies could be more properly channelled to help the two million people suffering as a result of the plunge in commodity prices.
(22/2/2001)