Malaysia's Morbid Anatomy

Hantu Laut

We are famous for our stinky public toilets, high road fatalities, corruptions and now a new addition to the morbid anatomy..... the most dangerous public transport in the world. Buses driven by nothing less than zombies.

The recent crash at Cameron Highland that claimed 27 lives is abominable.It's happening too often and the authorities are keeping a blind eye.

Only in Malaysia the minister of transport can still keep his job in spite of the long history of gory scenes of high road fatalities, frequent crashes of public buses killing many and crooked and rude taxi drivers in the capital city.

In countries where there are greater sense of moral shame the minister would have resigned or be removed for dereliction of duty. Here the minister is only interested who get what road building projects and abandoned his other sphere of responsibility.

Have you ever experienced having your taxi driver dozing off at the wheel? Kuala Lumpur are full of these completely doped up taxi drivers and I believe so are the bus drivers that have contributed to the frequent fatal crashes.Read here the horrifying crashes in less than a year.

What have our Road Transport Dept done to clamp down on this dangerous and disgraceful trends among public transport providers.Obviously, nothing.

Sleepy and druggy head drivers and badly maintained public buses are still allowed to ply our highways at breakneck speed and if the cops caught them, they are either let off because of their ethnicity or one of the things we are famous for which I need not emphasize here.

While our politicians are fighting tooth and nail on who should take Putrajaya next they forgot they have legal and moral obligations to protect the people.

The Social Pariahs

Hantu Laut

An uncaring minister, a loose cannon property agent and a pathetically disgraceful local council.Instead of providing words of comfort they showered the victims with discomfiting remarks.

Instead of sounding smart they sound more like they never had any moral education at all and have not learned the finesses of social etiquette, how to deal with people in time of death and tragedy.

Than you have those who are supposed to help rescue victims of the tragedy but have other agenda on their minds.There have been complain of rescuers who told victims to do the rescue themselves and some victim's properties were looted bringing more miseries to them.

The Minister of Information Ahmad Sabery Cheek had the cheek to say that property buyers should be equally blamed for the tragedy.I hope he can explain how and why they should be blamed.Another one, a so-called property expert and a loud-mouth,loose cannon asshole named Previndran Singhe rubbed salt into the wound by saying those properties affected by the landslide are worthless.Even if it is true do you have to say it now when people are still in a state of grieve and in mourning.

It is shocking that people of their positions can make such callous remarks without giving any due care and attention to the feelings the victims.

In time of death and tragedy the least said the better it is.

A Tragically Lazy Government

Hantu Laut

The tragedy at Bukit Antarabangsa is a reminder of the lack of will by the government to strictly enforce restrictions on unsafe hill slopes development.Money is still God in this country where safety to human lives takes a back seat.It is also a well-known fact that collusion and corruptions between developers and those in authority are as common as the rats found in the gutters of the city.

When tragedy struck those in government are quick to make promises of bullshit proportion.A year later when the tragedy evanescent it is back to square one, all promises are sent to the graves.

Worst, is the laziness on the part of the government to investigate and hold inquiry on such tragic incidents and bring to book those responsible.

On 15 March 1986 the six-storey Hotel New World in Singapore collapsed suddenly.The tragedy killed 33 and 17 were rescued over a seven-day rescue operation.The Singapore government investigated and held an inquiry.It was found poor design and shoddy workmanship were the cause of the mishap.In particular, the architects made an error in calculating the building's total load weight leaving out the "dead load" -- the building itself and only including the "live load" of the building contents and potential additions.The government all took further steps to inspect all buildings designed by the same architect.

On December 11 1993 one of the block of apartments at the Highland Towers collapsed like a pack of card killing 48 people.The government announced a ban on hillside development.Promises made, never fulfilled.Today the same tragedy occurred. What happened was not an act of God.It is by human design and greed.

An inquiry should be held to determine the cause of the tragedy and if there were elements of negligence the party concerned must be punished.Local authorities should not be given immunity against negligence suits.