JessiccaRise of the Patrol Prices – How do the Malaysians handle?
June 6th 2008 12:30
Honestly, do you ever heard / remember the tale of the shepherd boy and the wolf tale?
When you have too many false alarms, not many people start to take notice of it – until it is too late.
This happened the same thing when I received an SMS around 5:30pm with the content of “patrol increasing by 78cents and 1 ringgit for diesel fuels”. Because there were previously a few false alarms within the year of 2007, people started to question whether it was true or not. I forwarded the message to my brother and he reacted the same, “78cents? If the ruling government wants to hang itself, yeah, this is going to happened.”
Then my colleague and friends started to ring me up, passing the same message, and when one of my colleague’s son went into New Straits Times online and confirmed the message, it was raining thunderous storm and we couldn’t drive out to the nearest patrol station.
“I think it won’t be that bad. I can try to pump it a little later, like 10pm, by then there shouldn’t be too much people. It has always happened that.”
Ah… but at that time, there wasn’t any storm.
jam at office area
So by the time I got everything done at 6:45, my office square was so packed with cars outside I couldn’t even get out of the square to go home. There were 3 patrol stations and everyone was reluctant to give way as they all wanted to get to the nearest station to pump a full tank – well at least half…
Patrol Truck is stuck
1 hour and 30 minutes I waited in my car, and I saw the Shell Patrol Truck was heading to the nearby station. Unfortunately, as the minutes ticked you could hardly see the truck move… this was the sign of trouble coming.
Finally I manage to remember another route to get out to the highway. Forgetting there was another patrol station right at the junction beside the highway. 20 minutes I was waiting in the car, and then came shouts and horns. A woman tried to cut queue using the opposite lane and that has caused not only a major jam, the police have to come in to try to push the car out of the way as her engine died, at the same time trying to stall the other angry car drivers who with the movement of wanting to tear her apart.
One decision – millions of chaos in the streets that very night.
What was the government body thinking?
There was a previous announcement about patrol price hike but they did mention that it will be announced in August. That leaves business entrepreneurs time to adjust cost for their business, because every cent increase is a chain reaction to many other things, and daily lifestyle will increase in a large scale.
But a sudden jump of 40% price increase on patrols with just only 7 hours of warning time? This has caused a terrible shock, especially to those who were in logistic businesses and sales.
Imaging the lorry loaded travelling to North with the right amount only to know that the diesel price increased 50% when he needed to pump a full tank to return to the HQ, who will bare the unexpected costs – the moving company, especially for those the customers already prepaid the shipping cost, they can’t recharge them extra.
Parents will also feel the stab when the school holidays are over and they have to pay the sharp increase of school bus fees. According to the news I watched last night that the pinch will really be a sore to the consumers by the end of June when you can see all sudden sharp increase of prices for daily used products.
Perhaps Malaysians have really been pampered too much with the oil subsidy that the government has been offering through decades, but a sudden sharp of increase? Is the government trying to shake its people to wake up or a mere “revenge” just because they only have a simple majority win during the election?
Ok… enough of pointing fingers – we should really start searching through those forwarded emails about fuel saving tips; even for many others who start to opt for a more fuel-efficient vehicles rather enjoying the big and luxurious perks.
It’s just time to wake up and face the music.
For me, it’s just the time to move nearer to the new office and start opting cycling to work again…. The sooner the better…
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