Month: October 2019

Masyallah, Muslims Not Buying From Muslims Anymore?!!

What have happened to the campaign? Why then the MARA Digital Mall that is built for Malay Muslims is closed?

Ever since the announcement was made, I have my reservation. Those close to me would’ve probably heard my grouses or my frustration why I think MARA Digital Mall will not work. Today, my frustration and grouses were proved true. In a written response to a question by the previous Rural and Regional Development Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob, Rural Development Ministry said, that slow-moving sales coupled with disproportionate operating costs caused tenants to cease operating at the premises. It really is disheartening when you hear businesses failed. People put in the time, and money, some put in their life savings and all went down the drain.

There are many reasons why I believe that it won’t work. First, it was born out of spite. That is right, the MARA Digital Mall was born of spite after the infamous issue involving a guy who claimed to have been cheated after he purchased a phone from a seller in Low Yat Plaza. The issue later spiralled to a full blown riot in and around Low Yat Plaza. Why I say that it’s born out of spite? Low Yat Riot happened on 13 July 2015. Ismail Sabri was made as the Minister of Rural and Regional Development on 29 July 2015. and he proposed Low Yat 2 in early August 2015. No a month passed after the riot and he proposed Low Yat 2 for Malays. Just because there’s a fight between some Malay men and Chinese traders over a handphone. It’s time for Malay to fight against the Chinese. It may be a business fight, but it’s a fight nonetheless.

The information and communications technology (ICT) centre at MARA Digital Mall. (Photo by NST)

And just like that, Ismail Sabri got MARA working overtime to get a Mall set up for all the Malay traders. I’m sure hundreds of thousands or even millions were spent to set it up if we include the 6 months rent free period for all the Malay traders there. Mind you, these millions could’ve been spent on MRSM, or a real rural development project that would uplift the rural Malays who needed help the most. But nope, it’s better to pay the contractors to remodel the mall so that other urban Malays can open a handphone or IT shop. Sorry my dear kampung folks, the bandar folks is more important lah after the riot.

Second, the business environment was a bit off (by a bit I mean a lot) to begin with. MARA Digital Mall was planned to be opened early 2016 planning starts in August. 2015 was the year that Lazada saw the big explosion in their sales. They recorded US$1.3 billion of annualised Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) in 2015 across its six markets in South-East Asia. At this point, millions of us have already got a Lazada account and other online shopping platform accounts, and the biggest dollars was spent on electronics. It’s already telling at this point but of course Ismail Sabri don’t know any of this. He only knows that we Malays must fight the Chinese. Just fight, no need strategy, no need to make sure we win, just fight lah, and it’s okay because it’s not our money to use to fight anyway.

Electronics has been the biggest category in e-commerce and it’s expected to continue to be the main drivers of e-commerce. But of course Ismail Sabri don’t know this.

Of course you want to see consumer trending in spending before you spend millions of ringgit for a 5-7 years project. By 2015, we can see brick and mortar retail spending in electronics have trended down while online sales for the same category have rocketed. We see retailers like Seng Heng, and Other electronic stores open up shops in Lazada. We also see manufacturer like Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi and many others doing the same. But not Ismail Sabri, he wants to spend millions to open a brick and mortar digital mall instead. Not really a fully researched business venture indeed. And it’s all because his rather short sighted views of the whole thing, being clouded by Malay versus Chinese sentiment.

The above two reasons are good enough to see why the venture would fail. now that the venture failed, who lost the money? First and foremost my dear readers, it’s you and me. All the monies used to set up MARA digital mall are our hard earned money, the taxpayers money. Not Ismail Sabri’s but our money. He got the benefit or riding the UMNO branded Malay versus Chinese bandwagon while it’s the taxpayers money that is spent. And these money was taken away from other projects that may uplift the poor rural Malays life. It’s so disheartening.

Typical logo for BMF Campaign. Notice the present moon and green colour palette. More on this later.

I’d like to take this opportunity to bring our attention back to Buy Non-Muslim Last Campaign that is going on right now. Let’s face it, it’s not a Buy Muslim First Campaign. It’s a Buy Non-Muslims Last Campaign. Say it like it is lah. Have some balls lah. Don’t be such a kitty cat. At least Dr. Mahathir back in the 1980’s is honest enough to call his Buy British Last Policy, “Buy British Last”. He didn’t name it “Buy American First, or ‘Buy Malaysian First’ or whatever name that is politically correct. So first of all my dear Muslims friends, please have some balls and call a spade a spade lah. I thought Berani Kerana Benar?

The Good ol’ Dr Mahathir doesn’t need to be side stepping much because he have balls. He called a spade a spade. Unlike the Buy Non-Muslim Last folks, them balls not so big..

The point I’d like to stress is Islam is very inclusive. Islam can’t be exclusive. We can’t treat Islam like this exclusive club where only the Muslims can join and enter or prioritise muslims first. If Islam is exclusive, then Prophet Muhammad would be the only Muslim because it’s exclusive to Muslim only, and since anybody else can’t join, he’d be alone. That is why anything Islam, shouldn’t not be exclusive.

That is why I despise mosque or offices that mandated all to wear hijab or cover their aurat to enter their premises. We need to be inclusive. There’s this situation where a person who’s not wearing hijab but just started praying 5 times a day. One day, She was on a long trip and stopped at a mosque to pray. She saw a sign that says she can’t enter a mosque without hijab, she entered anyway as it’s to conduct her prayers, she was scolded by a Pakcik there for not wearing hijab. How can we perform dakwah if non muslim and muslim who’s not fully practicing Islam can’t even enter the mosque? I’ve been to numerous mosque in other countries and very hardly I see this rules. they would welcome everyone no matter who and they would use the opportunity to perform dakwah during the visit. Islam must be inclusive. It’s for all, be it Arab, Malays, Chinese, white, blacks, brown, yellow or even purple. Islam is inclusive, no matter who you are, you can join the club. I’m sure I’ll get some backlash on this it’s oh-so-typical to get backlash on stuff like this.

You’d sometime see sign like this in mosques and some part of government offices.

Now back to this campaign, this Buy Non-Muslim Last Campaign. This is an exclusive campaign targeted for muslims only. They are telling people to make the club exclusive to muslim only. Brand it as Muslim first, Malay First and whatever first lah. This is not a sound business practice. You don’t learn from the very people that you despise. I saw many posts shared by the proponents of this campaign, they are trying to crate this list of non-muslims products that look like a muslim’s product. For example the name would be using a Malay word like Ikhlas, Murni, Bersih, Sufi and the likes. On top of that, the packaging would be in green and have a muslim-friendly logo. For example, using jawi font, cresent moon logo, batik pattern and the likes. These are the product that they despise as they are from non muslim’s but portrayed to look like a muslim’s, they felt cheated.

What you need to learn is to outbrand them, be inclusive. Include everyone and show to everyone that you are the most honest, the most value for money, the best, the fastest and whatever that is inclusive to all. Don’t just stop at being muslim and that is it. A muslims means nothing, a muslim still can end up in hell ya lest you forgot. We have Muslims thief, a muslim murderer and worst of all, a muslim child rapist. So, a muslims means nothing. If you have a shop selling phones, don’t just be a Muslim shop selling phones. Be something that is inclusive and have value to all, best value phone shop, best customer service phone shop, cheaper phone shop, most variety phone shop. Whatever tickles you fancy lah. Just don’t stop to be Muslim only. Must be good muslim ya, not just muslim.

So, I suggest to stop this nonsense of buy non-muslims last campaign and start a new campaign. I suggest a campaign of “to be the best in the the segment that you want to be”. The segment must be inclusive and universal. No such thing as Malay first, chinese first or gay first. An example would be best value grocery store. I want to go to that store because it gives me best value. If there are two stores, one belongs to a muslim and another is non muslim. Assuming the Muslim store is the one that give more value while the non muslim not so much. I can guarantee that both muslims and non muslims will go to the store that gives more value in the long run. Why? because that nobody wants to waste money down the drain. Heck, even the Chinese wouldn’t want to buy from another chinese who charges more than he should because Chinese are good with money. They don’t waste money for nothing. The Chinese are good at that.

Another example would be best quality and design tailor. No matter if you are muslim or not, people would go to a tailor that have the best quality tailoring and design. No point going to muslim shop and at the end of the day got a lousy design and tailoring quality. High quality and good design are universal, everybody wants high quality and good design, especially if they are affordable.

So remember, don’t do something out of spite, start a digital mall out of spite lah, start a “Buy non-Muslim last campaign” out of spite lah and whatever else out of spite. Just be a good muslim and practice all the universal values that Islam preach. Start a business that have a universal and inclusive purpose. Don’t have a business who’s purpose is to kill the other guy. The purpose of the business is to provide the best service or product for the customer. The byproduct of that successful business might be the closure of your competitor shop and another byproduct can be you making millions of ringgit in profits. That’s good right?

If we can do the above, and coupled it with a good business sense and great work ethics, perhaps we can have a successful Digital Mall or any other business for that matter. Inshallah, Muslim and Non-Muslim will buy your product.

Peace be unto all.

You Need A Budget Part 2

Yesterday’s posting stirs quite the bee’s nest. Thank you for all the feedback and views shared.

In this second part, the issue I want to bring up is on Malaysian@Work initiative. Under the Malaysians@Work initiative, graduates who secured a job after having been unemployed for more than a year will receive RM500 per month from the government for a duration of two years.

Employers will also receive a hiring incentive of up to RM300 per month for each new hire over two years. The idea behind it is to create jobs for the unemployed graduates. With this, the Malaysians@Work initiative is expected to create an additional 350,000 jobs for Malaysians and reduce foreign worker dependency by more than 130,000 and will cost the government RM6.5 billion over five years. That is a lot of money.

Malaysias@Works initiative tabled in Parliament as part of Budget 2020.

It’s typical of politicians or bosses that don’t have connected brain cells. Before solving a problem, we need to to a little bit of RCA. Root Cause Analysis, find out what caused the issue, not just any cause, we must find the root cause and then fix it. 

Let’s dig a little why do we have so many unemployment in the country. Here’s a quote from MEF Salary Survey 2016:

“In order to enhance the employability of graduates, he stated that 90.3% of the respondent companies were of the view that it was important to improve the proficiency of English to increase the employability of graduates followed by developing soft skills, such as communication, problem solving and management skills (87%),” said Tan Sri Azman.

You guessed it right, it’s a skill issue. In this case, companies aren’t hiring our graduates due to communication skills issue. Apparently our graduates can’t speak nor write in English for shit. 

God forbid they learn English in school, but ohhhh, they must have Khat and they are willing to fight tooth and nail till Jannah, to have Khat in the syllabus, even if it’s for just 3 pages of Khat studies in the textbook. Fight till Jannah for Khat, but for english…that’s kafir! That’s is stupidity indeed. Alright, I digress, my apologies, back to the topic at hand.

English is the language of business here in Malaysia. In 5-10 years time, it will probably be Mandarin because China as an economic super power is almost guaranteed now.We have no choice but to equip ourselves with English and our kids with both English and Mandarin. Get angry at DAP all you want but the future of SJK (C) and the Manadarin language is here to stay. We may end up having Mandaring language as one of the subject in Sekolah Kebangsaan. The ability to communicate with English and Mandarin speakers will be more important in the future. Here’s the 2018/2019 Critical Occupation List and Top Associated Skills from World Bank. Take a look at the skills needed for the positions. Notice the pattern? Good.

I highlighted Chinese for clarity. And noticed English is in almost every position. Where’s Khat? Jawi? Let’s fight till Jannah.

Secondly, in the 2018 paper “Graduate Work-Readiness in Malaysia: Challenges, Skills and Opportunities” by Dr. Noorziah Mohd Salleh et al., lecturer at the Faculty of Business and Management, UiTM (my alma mater). Dr Noorziah et al. wrote that while “low skill and low productivity work with tough working conditions and limited career development opportunities” are aplenty, these jobs do not appeal to graduates. “The low level of work-readiness among Malaysian graduates” is an issue that has yet to be resolved.

Ok the doctors in universities like to use hard to understand language. Let’s break it down. First, most work that is available are those with low skill, low productivity, tough working environment and with limited career growth. Basically it’s a tough job lah. Kerja susah, kerja kucing kurap dan susah nak naik pangkat, pastu gaji ciput. These types of jobs are not preferred by these graduates. And these jobs are filled with foreign workers.

This is what the government needs to tackle. Creation of high-skilled jobs. Not the creation of low level jobs that doesn’t give the satisfaction in the workers mind. I’m talking about job satisfaction, not monetary satisfaction. Take a look this statement by BNM in their report on the question of the workers paid fairly?

Evidence suggests that the lack of high-skilled job creation could have played an integral role in this. Between 2010 and 2017, the number of diploma and degree holders in the labour force increased by an average of 173,457 persons per annum, much higher than the net employment gains in high-skilled jobs of 98,514 persons per annum.

Apparently our economy are not generating enough high-skilled jobs to fulfil the demand of these graduates. Looks like the Good Doctor is right again. I still remember in the big hall of ITM back in 1999. I was among the people who are in the hall when Dr. Mahathir announced ITM will be given university status and the name changed to UiTM. In Dr. Mahathir’s speech, he mentioned that we have too many universities and we are producing way too many graduates who thinks they should be leaders. Dr. Mahathir said we may end up with too many ship captains without their ships and without their trusty sailors. It looks like this turned out to be true. We have way too many ship captains available and yet not enough ships in this economy now. And these captain wannabes want to be a captain and nothing else. Or, they can be sailors but with a captain’s salary, more on this soon.

These there are the problems causing the high unemployment among our youth. First, they can’t speak nor write in English. Second, we don’t have enough high-skilled jobs in the economy. I’ve been in the business of hiring youth the last 18 years, and I can confirm the above two facts are the truth. They are mostly Malays, we can’t deny that these are mostly Malays.

Don’t start telling me about many of our Malay brethren works delivering for foodpanda or Grabfood. These are high paying, low skills, low complexity jobs. Get that, kerja senang, gaji tinggi tapi takdak future. I have talked to numerous foodpanda and grab riders. They can get anywhere between RM750 to RM1250 weekly, yes weekly. They even told me, “I will do this for a few years to save enough money to (get married, buy a house, buy a car, etc) and then I quit. I don’t think this job has a future”. They know this is a dead end and low skilled job and yet they still do it because the pay is good. Low skills, no career growth and high pay. I have friends who quit their 9-5 job that have a decent pay but with tremendous career growth and yet quit and joined grab. They prefer big and quick money for a quick and easy job. Remember when I said our graduates don’t mind being sailors as long as they get paid like a captain? Yup, and did you recently hear someone, somewhere said the Malays are lazy? Kerja senang, nak duit banyak dan cepat. This also reminds me of the Marshmallow Experiment. Wants everything now and not later. Ah, I digress again. It’s not about the Rakyat, it’s about the 2020 budget and the government. We talk about the Rakyat in some other posts.

That’s is a nice looking jar of marshmallows. Go read up on Marshmallow Experiment. I’m failing this miserably with my kids. They seems to want everything now! Just like my bosses!

And since we are on the subject of grab and foodpanda, we have our Youth and Sports Minister, Syed Saddiq, working hard to bring in GoJek. It looks as if he’s giving Gojek preferential treatment with special meetings and some behind the scenes time. This is another short sighted views of the whole matter. We need to create high-skilled jobs, not more low skilled jobs. Our BNM reports said so Tuan Syed. Then he’s also meddling in this foodpanda vs the workers situation. If this is not paving gold plated red carpet for GoJek, I’m not sure what is. Here’s a new and young minister with a new face and no baggage of owing to corporations for money and whatnot, so don’t start going down the road of kowtow-ing to corporations lobbyist. Just be fair to all businesses, make it easier for businesses to thrive. Businesses thrives means more job creations. Ahhh, I digress again! The point is, high-skilled jobs, not low-skilled jobs. Got that Tuan Syed?

Syed Saddiq being perceived as paving a gold plated road for Gojek to come in. While it’s great for everyone that we break up Grab’s dominance in e-hailing, it must not be seen as the government is giving preferential treatment to GoJek.

Back to the main point, the root cause are skill mismatch issues and not enough high-skilled jobs issue. It’s not a situation of our youth not getting enough salary or the employers not having enough money to employ these youth. It’s so typical of politicians, they think they can solve problems by throwing monies everywhere. And Syed Saddiq smiles and looked so proud and can see his mouth saying jobs, jobs, jobs. Let me tell you mr Dear Syed, this won’t solve the problems. Giving free money to the Rakyat and companies wont’s solve the root cause of the problems. As much as you hated BN last time or giving out free money in the form of BR1M, you are doing the same thing here.

My beef is the budget didn’t touch enough on creating more high-skilled jobs, working with universities to have better courses and produce better graduates that have good english communication skills. Let’s hope the longer term 12th Malaysia Plan will touch more on this and makes it the central theme.

So there you have it folks, two issues I have serious beef with. PART 1 on minimum wage, Part 2 on Malaysian@Work initiative. See you in the next budget. 

Peace be unto all.

You Need A Budget Part 1

I’ve penned two things I have a beef about in the 2020 budget.

I just downloaded THIS app to start managing my monies better. It’s pretty unique and good actually. I have a few goals for next few years and I’d like to achieve them all. Let’s hope this app can help me achieve these goals.

Since we are on the subject of budget, I am a bit torn with a few items in the recently concluded 2020 budget tabling by LGE our Finance Minister. 

LGE presenting the 2020 Budget in Parliament

Overall, I feel it’s a populist budget. Most people get something from the 2020 budget. It’s for the masses. Middle income get some, B40 gets the most, and everybody is happy now that the rich are taxed more. Be it only 2000+ of the filthy rich folks impacted, it will still make a good headline for the masses to feel good about it. A populist budget means the government wanted the Rakyat to feel good about the administration. The Rakyat has been feeling anxious and unhappy with the performance of the administration the last year or so. This populist budget will probably get the administration a few points up, in the approval rating. 

I’m feeling pretty good about many of the stuff that was announced. Some of the opposition politicians said the budget had nothing significantly new. Many of the initiatives are carried over from BN era apparently. Well to that I say, why fix it if there’s nothing wrong. PH main beef was with Najib, many other policies have proved to be successful, so continue lah. It’ll be stupid to change something that’s working well. Just change what’s not working well and that’s Datuk Seri Najib and his cohorts.

So to keep up with the spirit of typical Malaysians, whom does not comments on good things, and just comments super hard on the not so good things, let’s get the ball rolling. 

First up, the Minimum Wage. Government will increase the minimum wage to RM1200 for select major city. I’m going to assume major cities will be Klang Valley, Penang and JB. 

Let me get this out first, I believe we should have less government intervention and more market forces decided on things. I agree that there should be government intervention, but it needs to be kept at a minimum. 

So, when the government announced higher minimum wage, I’m not a happy camper. We are just buying time to satiate the rakyat with easy money without increased productivity. Market forces dictate that one should only pay when one gets the value that one wants. In the case of minimum wage, the employers get the same output/productivity but it costs more now. That is not economically viable and against the law of economics. Market will eventually correct itself.

LGE tabling the budget, statingmMinimum wage has been increased to RM1200 starting next year in major cities.

Imagining running a business and you get this increased costs out of nowhere but productivity remained the same. How will the business compensate to the increased costs? Increase the price! That’s the easiest. It’ll be easier since the market now have surplus of money due to the increase in minimum wage.

Very quickly, the market will adjust to the increase in costs with an increase in price. Give it 3-6 months to adjust, probably by April or June of 2020. The Rakyat’s buying power will then be back to where it was before. The rakyat will not get intended increased buying power and the business will then get back their normal profit levels. But prices of goods and services have since increased. 

Another unintended impact of higher minimum wage is automation. Look at some of the places in the world where minimum wages has become so high that businesses can no longer afford to hire minimum wage worker. The businesses resorted to automation. Robots instead of chefs/cooks to cook the food, drones to send the pizzas instead of riders. Conveyor belts and robot arms to pack stuff at the warehouse instead of packing worker. Robots vacuum cleaner to clean up the floors at offices instead of your typical auntie cleaner. These are minimum wage jobs with minimum wage tasks. 

Here are some examples we have in KL, look at many McDonald’s outlets we have around the city. They now have ordering kiosks, some outlets have three of them installed and some have up to 5 kiosks. Who are these kiosk replacing? Yup, minimum wage cashier. Now we only see one cashier manning the counter. 

Another example, Pump attendant, back in the 90’s we have pump attendant. Nowadays with cashless payments and automated pump, we no longer need the minimum wage pump attendant workers. 

In the more developed countries, we have ROBOTS FLIPPING BURGERS! Take a read in that article and see for your self a robot flipping burger patties.

That is Flippy, a robot flipping burgers in California.

Let’s take a look at San Francisco, California. Here, the minimum wage is a whopping USD12 per hour. How much money is USD12 per hour? Let’s do the Big Mac meal set comparison. A Big Mac meal set in Bay Area, SF, is USD5.99. Working for an hour there can get you 2 Big Macs meals. So, working for an hour will get you 2 meals for the day. 

Let’s do the same calculation in KL. RM1200 a month is about RM5.77 per hour. A Big Mac meal set in KL costs RM14.95. You need to work for 2.6 hours before you can get a single meal. 

Comparing San Francisco Bay Area and Kuala Lumpur, the minimum wage if California is super duper high lah, we can say that kan. That is why my friends, they have robots flipping burgers. These robots cost less than a human being, at USD60K per robot, the cost is the same as 20 months of minimum wage salary + some benefits of probably valued at about 20% of the salary. Benefits like annual leave, hospitalisation and medical, EPF and etc. 

This means after 20 months, the robots now works for free. Robot don’t do mistakes, they cook perfectly, they don’t complaint, they don’t take breaks, they don’t ask for 15 minutes solat break twice a day on top of the 1 hour break. Best of all, robots don’t get sick as often and don’t go on annual or maternity leave. 

Have you ever had Costa Coffee brewed by the robots in those Shell Select Petrol Stations? They taste the same almost every time you get them right? Compared to Starbucks sometime too sweet, sometime too bland and sometimes the Frappuccino ice is too chunky and sometimes not. Some of you argued that you need human to interact and whatever lah, when was the last time you spoke to the baristas brewing your coffee? While using the McDonald’s kiosk and did not even miss the human cashier you had interacted back in the days. In fact, you are glad that you had the kiosk because it’s way faster than having a newbie cashier taking you orders oh-so-slowly and sometimes with errors. 

I might be talking too much into the future but sometimes we forget that the future is not that far off. Look at that family picture you have in your purse or wallet or on your office table, yeah, it’s been more than 10 years since you got married. Time flies.

Alright, let’s take a look at the second not so good things about the 2020 budget. Let’s take a look at it in a separate article I’ll post tomorrow. I feel this is getting too long already. I need to write shorter articles and get to the point faster. Lots of my readers only skimmed through the articles and they feel it’s too long. If you managed to read up till this paragraph, give yourselves a pat on the back and give a comment on what you think below or on my FB/Twitter/LinkedIn page and I’ll send you Domino’s Pizza discount codes as a token of my appreciation. I got a few extra and these have expiry dates and limited quantities. Be fast yah.

Peace be unto all.

p/s: If you have time, read up on what Andrew Yang, the next presidential candidate for USA have to say about automation industry.

Don’t Kill the Messenger

I’ve written down my thoughts of the recent closure of Utusan Malaysia operations and the papers.

Spent a while thinking of the title of this posting. It’s rather harsh and it kinda not what I really want to say. But alas, that will do for now. 

Back in the day, probably in the 90’s, my favourite newspaper was Mingguan Malaysia. The Sunday edition of Utusan Malaysia (literally translated to Malaysian Courier/Messenger). There was a time when I look forward to Sundays, where I’d have a chance to read the ‘Wawancara’ or interview of the week. It’s usually two sometimes three pages long. I’d read every sentence written and re-read them. That’s where I developed my love for Q&A or interview sessions. Till today, the part I love the most in any magazine I picked up would be interviews with a particular person of interest to me. I’d buy a full blown magazine to just read a 2-3 pages of interview that interests me. I just love reading about how one thought process works in their head, in doing or coming out with something. 

I love to understand the thought process behind some of the policies introduced by the government and the current situations faced by the person of interest feature in Mingguan Malaysia. Many a time, you can see how much one’s filter or views of certain situations, shaped their thought process and action towards it. It kinda opens you mind and let you experience this paradigm shift of your own views or opinions. Suddenly you realised that you weren’t so RIGHT or, there are more than one ways to see or do things other that YOUR ways.

My second favourite section was of course “bisik-bisik by Awang Selamat. I just love the writing style. A bit of sarcasm, with a dash of criticism on various topics of interest. They are just short snippets of what Awang thinks on current issues. Some are sarcastic in nature, some are straight up finger pointings, some are just mild criticisms and some are just opinions on matters of interest. It’s a great place to catch up on some topics, that the editors fancy. Sort of like twitter posting nowadays, a short and sweet take on issues. Sometimes it’s a thread that takes up several tweets, sometimes it’s just a single paragraph. Love it. 

A look at the Bisik-Bisik by Awang Selamat.

After a while, probably around 2006 or so, I started to find Utusan a little unbearable. Too many politicians doing and saying stupid things at the time and Utusan no longer make it a point to write about them. Back in the days they would write about it in the Awang Selamat column or in some of the guests writer column. I always look forward to it because I know we can depend on the paper to fight for us the Rakyat and tell these politicians off. But alas, it seldom happened around that period onwards.

I may be too young to remember or perhaps its the nostalgia that is clouding my mind, but, I still remember moments where I read Awang Selamat calling out some of the politicians doing or saying something stupid. At least, in a sarcastic manner so as not to cause them any trouble. But that was no longer the case, if I remember correctly, it was probably around Pak Lah’s time.

The other thing about Utusan, they was so behind the curve in their adoption of the News-on-the-Internet stuff. I still remember their website was slow to load, still using frames, and whatever janky web tools that were probably 5-10 years behind the curve. What made it worse was, probably only a few years ago, before they got their ‘new’ website, they would load a full desktop page on a mobile device. Be it a phone or a tablet, the same full desktop website would load and it took literally 5-10 seconds for the whole thing to load. A big turn off if we want to read an article that probably will only take 5-10 seconds to read or skimmed through. Coupled that with a clickbait-ty headlines, you’d be cursing the moment you realised the article was a shitty one. It was that bad.

On social media front, I still follow Utusan on Facebook, and here’s the other part they failed to take advantage of. There are almost nothing else other then posts showing snippets of the news and a link to the article on their website. That’s it. Occasionally you’d see Senyum Kambing posting. They had zero social media personality and strategy. Almost zero interaction with the readers or followers of the page.

Yes, this is how Utusan posts on Facebook. Don’t get me started what they do with Twitter.

I love Utusan. Wait, maybe I should say, I used to love Utusan. I felt Utusan was really a newspaper I’m really proud to be a reader of. But, after they no longer have these opinion pieces, interviews, Awang Selamat takes on stuff that matters and news stories that matters, to folks like me, I no longer felt proud…for many many years. And since Utusan never really cared about their younger or more technology savvy readers, where most of these readers only spent their time online and on social media, I kinda stopped caring about them as well.

To me, Utusan no longer represent the modern Malays, the Rakyat that wanted to be informed, that wanted to stay ahead what’s happening and serves the interest of the readers.

A few months ago, there was a campaign to buy start buying Utusan again so that it can be saved. I did not do anything at all. It needs to be save by it’s masters, not us the readers that it betrays. Unless the masters of Utusan cares and let Utusan be Utusan, it is more suited to be left for dead instead. Utusan in it’s current state is not worth saving. Even with all the history behind it, it’s better if all of it dies. Let it be a reminder to never stray from the mission that it sets to be. Utusan needs to apologise for straying too far away, it needs to start serving its readers again rather than its masters.

Corporations that failed their customers need to apologise sincerely and starts to work towards being better and win the trust of their customers. They can’t take it for granted. Look at Domino’s Pizza Turnaround, this has been a textbook case study around the world on how a corporation can really turned-around a failing business. Listen to what customers have to say, internalise and understand it, acknowledge it, then pledge to be better. It’s very simple.

I sure hope Syed Mokhtar and his team can make it NSTP group the papers that we the Rakyat can be proud of, not just papers to be given free to schools and government offices. Syed Mokhtar have also been buying shares of Utusan via his proxies, I hope he’ll make Utusan a better newspaper as well. One that serves the readers. As for Utusan, you can stay dead if you don’t change because, nobody wants to save you, even your masters didn’t save you. Yup, your masters left you to die, really, they left you for dead. Don’t get angry at me, I’m just the messenger, sending you this message. Don’t kill the messenger.

Peace be unto all.

p/s: I knew the title will deliver at the end.

p/p/s: Edited the part relating to Syed Mokhtar to clarify the shares he’s buying or have been holding for a few years.