the wacky wombat weblog

What has it come to when the government pays RM214 for a set of screwdrivers that probably cost only RM40, and doesn’t do a thing to check for possible corrupted practices?

Read this on The Star online today. It’s simply ridiculous.

The Auditor-General’s report revealed that the government has been paying insanely high prices for what seems to be very generic tools when they funded the supplies tools for the National Youth Skills Institutes in Malaysia.

Like RM10,000 for a technical tool set that costs RM 400?? And the list goes on.

Hasn’t it occured to anyone to check what was going on when the proposed budget ballooned from 400 million to 700 million? You mean nobody noticed the suspicious budget that doubled twofold?!?! 0_o Amazing. Dunno how to count izzit?

This is what truly annoys me about my home country. No proper governance, no transparency, and money squandered away for the benefits of the filthy selected rich ones.

When I first came to Singapore to study 6 years ago (gosh so long ago!), I was still optimistic, and dreaming of going back to KL to live and work there. What to do, I was 18 and I missed home.

But after all these years and witnessing what goes on in the news and among the people, all desire of returning home to ’serve my country’ has vanished.

No way I’m going back there in the near future to wallow in mediocrity and fear for my safety on the roads, and suffer through high cost of living. (Contrary to what many think, Singapore is a much more affordable city to work and live in. But that’s material for another blog post. :p)

Not to mention the rising tension of racism and religious difference. Nothing’s happened, but signs of the society being delineated along racial religious lines are just too obvious to ignore.

Once you’ve travelled abroad, seen other cities and all, then you start to see all the possibilities that could have been, but are wiped off because of greed, inefficiency, selfishness and narrow-mindedness. The future definitely doesn’t look too good.

Singapore isn’t the best city in the world to live in (I’m still trying to find out which city is), but I think I’d live better and happier here. So for now, I’ll just shelf my KL plans. For now it’ll just be my hometown, where I go back only for visits to my family and friends, and ‘real’ food.