Another Amendment

At last, they are going to consider protecting consumer for online purchases. The Consumer Protection Act will be amended to cover online purchases.

Hopefully, the amendment to the act will be passed in the coming Parliament so that consumers would be able to bring the matter to the consumer tribunal over purchases they made online.

For more information, refer to this report.

Receipt Please!

In an effort to prevent taxi drivers from charging unscrupulous fees to their customers, all taxi drivers are required to produce fare receipts to their passengers starting next year. I wonder why this measure wasn't taken earlier and I keep on wondering how on earth that the relevant authority will enforce this measure. Will they stop every taxi and demanding that the driver provide them with a proof of the receipt. Such a measure will only give inconvenient to the passengers.

Read more about this issue in this report.

Personally, I support the measure but I am quite sceptical about the outcome of such measure. Overall, the taxi drivers have to change their attitude but most of the time they only will change the attitude if there is an effective enforcement being taken against errant drivers.

Unnecessary Traffic Jam

I had to drive to Kuching yesterday for a meeting at 9 am and decided to drive just after 8 am to avoid traffic jam along the route. However, I and most of the road users had to endure unnecessary traffic jam as shown above and I kept on wondering what was going on because most of the time the traffic jam wasn't that bad along the route.

After patiently crawling along the route then I realize what causes the severe congestion. Just look at the picture below and everybody's time is wasted due to inconsiderate workers collecting rubbish along the road.

Since the road is a popular road to Kuching, the workers should have carried out their works early in the morning i.e. before rush hour so that everybody's time is not wasted.

That is one of the major reasons for unnecessary traffic jam in Kuching or in other place in Malaysia i.e. due to inconsiderate people hogging the busy road. Their action causes so much lost of opportunity time for other road users.

So as for myself, I had to endure for almost an hour in the traffic jam which usually took only half an hour to reach my destination. Luckily, I managed to arrive at the meeting place on time since I had decided to drive earlier than usual that day.

Traffic Congestion Reduction

According to this report, the operation at Tanjung Puteri Custom Complex will be operational 24-hours. All this while I thought that the operation at the custom complex is already 24-hours since it is the major entry and exit point to our neighbouring country i.e. Singapore.

With the round the clock operation, the congestion due to heavy lorries on our road will be lessen since most of the lorries can travel at night.

However, hopefully, the export-import industries will use our own ports instead of our neighbouring ports to exports goods overseas in order for the local ports to be busy.

The local ports from now have to improve further their services to attract more customers due to the stiff competition.

Working Mum Will be Happy about This News

Image by edgeplot via Flickr

According to this news report, the Government seemed to be ready to adopt the concept of working from home for the Civil Service. 

The concept of working from home will be very beneficial especially for working mum. As of now, most of the talented mum will have to quit their job due to family reasons. If the concept of working from home is implemented, the working mom can still do their job but they are doing it from home.

The concept is also workable because currently, the important aspect of the job is outcome based driven. If the concept of working from home can increase productivity, then the outcome based concept can be adopted.

However, not everyone can work from home because only certain job specifications are suitable to be done from home. For example, in the case of Public Works Department draughtsmen, they can certainly work from home because their performance are based on the completion of their drawings. Regardless of them working from home or at the office, as long as they can deliver their drawings on time, I think they already performed their duties.

Of course they have to come to office from time to time in case there are meetings that they have to attend or they are required to do certain tasks outside of their job scope.

If you have some other example of jobs that are suitable to be implemented from home, I am very happy if you can chip in you comments below.

Operating Gas Station in Malaysia

All the while we have been filling in gas into our gas guzzling vehicles in Malaysia without realising the predicament of the gas station owners. Based on this news report REPORT, it seems that all the while, the gas operator only being given sole proprietary license which mean that they cannot transfer the license to their next of kin.

No wonder, I always found out that there were some instances somewhere in Malaysia where the gas stations were remodelled or left idle for certain period of time may be associated with the issue of allocating license to different owner for the station. I might be wrong here.

Based on the report, some 3,200 petrol station operators nationwide can now change their business licences from sole proprietary to private limited, a move to allow the operators' children to take over the business.

Also, the government increased their commission rate from 9.5 sen to 12.19 sen per litre of petrol and 4.5 sen to seven sen for a litre of diesel from June last year.

Now, doing the Gas Station business is not bad at all. But I don't think everybody can venture into this business, otherwise all of the place will filled with Gas station.

Promising Future for Public Transport

According to this REPORT, by the year 2012, the waiting time for LRT (Light Rail Transit) will be reduced from currently every three minutes to every two minutes as a result of additional 6 additional trains added in the future. The additional train is said to have four compartments as opposed to two compartments for the existing train. Hopefully, all of the LRT stations, especially underground stations, have enough doors to cater for the additional compartments.

Hopefully, the additional trains will be able to reduce the passengers queueing time at the LRT stations during peak hours. If the congestion level at the LRT stations is improved, then more users will be attracted to use the service because it is more comfortable and convenient to passengers.

I wish that the improvements will be a little bit sooner i.e to be implemented by the year 2010.

Travelling Via KLIA Transit

KLIA Transit is a convenient way of travelling from KLIA to any of three destinations along the way from KLIA to KL Sentral. The three stations are Salak Tinggi, Putrajaya/Cyberjaya, and Bandar Tasik Selatan.

It is a convenient way of travelling to Putrajaya. From Putrajaya, there are several choices for mode of transport, i,e Putrajaya Bus or taxi services.

The travel time and train schedule can be found HERE. The departure time for the train is every 30 minutes.

The train service is very comfortable, convenient, reliable and also the price is reasonable. The fares for the service can be found HERE.

For your information, the train always depart and arrive on time based on the specified schedule.

Using the KLIA Transit, from KLIA to KL Sentral, the one-way fare is RM35 and the travel time is 35 minutes with three stops. If you use the ERL train, the one-way fare is also RM35 and the travelling time is 28 minutes without stop.

If you are travelling on a budget, you can stop at any of the three stops along the way and then purchase a new ticket to KL Sentral and the total cost of the tickets from KLIA to KL Sentral is RM 15.70. You can refer to this fare schedule for the calculation. For example, if you stop at Putrajaya & Cyberjaya Station from KLIA, the ticket is RM6.20. Then, the ticket from Putrajaya & Cyberjaya station to KL Sentral is RM9.50. Thus, the total price is RM 15.70. However, you have to wait for another 30 minutes at the particular station for the next train to arrive. So your total travelling time will be longer for additional 30 minutes. You can use this alternative if you are really tight on a budget and you are not in a hurry for any meeting. If you are in a hurry, you have to use ERL Express for that purpose.

Thus, forgiving the convenient direct ride from KLIA to KL Sentral and have to go through the hassle of alighting the train, getting out of the station, purchasing another ticket and re entering the station, you can save more than 50% of the ticket price.

You can pay a much cheaper price if you stop at Bandar Tasik Selatan station and transfer to the KTM commuter line. However, the travel time can be a little bit longer since the KTM commuter is a little bit slower and has to stop at several more stations along the way before it arrived at the Kuala Lumpur Sentral.

From KL Sentral you can ride the Light Rail Transit (LRT) to get to your final destination and you can save even much more as compared to using the taxi service.