Geo Politics

PETALING JAYA: Unemployment rates among low-income urban households in Malaysia doubled in the Klang Valley during the conditional lockdown implemented last year, says a report by Unicef, the United Nations children’s fund. A survey of 500 households in Kuala Lumpur’s low-cost flats showed that unemployment had risen from 7% in September to 15% in December, with one in three unemployed …

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia — After fleeing a refugee camp in neighboring Indonesia, dozens of Rohingya, mostly women, and children, were captured as they arrived by boat in Malaysia last month, police said Friday. Last year, after risky journeys, nearly 400 members of the persecuted Muslim community from Myanmar arrived in Indonesia by sea, and just over 100 now remain in a camp …

It’s a good move for the Ministry of Finance as it plans to reconsider the eligibility conditions for obtaining financial assistance under the Rao Chana (We Win) system which stipulates that a taxable income of no more than 300,000 baht per year should be available to recipients. The We Win program that was approved in January, aims to provide 31 …

PETALING JAYA: An MP says the “highest ever” trade surplus recorded last year by the country is nothing to be proud of as it is a product of a very poor domestic economy. MP Ong Kian Ming from Bangi also said that this year the domestic economy is likely to remain lacklustre. Earlier, Senior Economy Minister Mohamed Azmin Ali reported …

It’s intense how the ruling Palang Pracharath Party is being pushed by its supporters, likely at the detriment of coalition unity, to field a candidate in a by-election in Nakhon Si Thammarat. Rong Boonsuaykwan, Nakhon Si Thammarat’s Palang Pracharath MP and leader of the Area 8 party group of MPs, said representatives of the province want the party to challenge …

Surprisingly, according to Chief Opposition Whip and Pheu Thai MP Sutin Klungsang, there are some 45 opposition MPs are queuing up to quiz Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha and nine cabinet ministers in the imminent no-confidence debate. It was highlighted that the opposition parties had debated how to share time between them and had so far asked for 45 MPs on …

Mayor Isko Moreno declared that Manila plans to vaccinate at least 18,000 people against COVID-19 every day until the city government carries out the inoculation scheme. Surprisingly, this will amount to 540,000 inoculated people every month. He shared that there are 18 vaccination centers in operation, mainly public schools, to roll out the vaccines. Meanwhile, To expand the number of …

Due to political ineptitude and the inability to handle the Covid-19 crisis under the Perikatan Nasional (PN) administration, is Malaysia in danger of going down the same road and being seen as the new ‘sick man’ of Asia in the 2020s? At the beginning of 2021, the PN government’s failure to handle the third wave of Covid-19 cases culminated in …

In line with the request of the Paris-based watchdog Financial Action Task Force for the government to review its policies against dirty money, President Duterte signed into law Republic Act 11521, which further strengthens the 20-year-old Anti-Money Laundering Act, yesterday. Duterte beat the February 1st deadline that was set by the FATF for introducing improvements to AMLA by signing the …

SINGAPORE — On Friday, Finance Minister Zafrul Aziz said that the ongoing lockdown of Malaysia to contain Covid-19 would hit the economy much less than the previous one when more economic activity was limited. The new round of steps cost Malaysia a lost economic production or GDP of an estimated 700 million ringgit ($172.7 million) a day, the minister said. …