Unless you have been living in a remote jungle forest of Borneo without any internet connection or TV whatsoever, you would have known by now how much petrol price has risen overnight. I quickly went to refuel both my cars. I consider myself lucky. I got refueled in less than an hour for each cars. Some are not so lucky. The Jalan Putra Permai which has 4 petrol stations were choked full of cars queuing up all along the road. My colleague got stuck in LDP for 2 hours last night, and she was not even refueling!
I have never queued up to fill up petrol before in my entire life during a fuel price increase, even when the price increased by 20 cents or 30 cents before. But this time, it’s bloody 78 cents! That’s an increase of 40%! My Wira will be affected the most. It’s the car with the highest fuel consumption rate. At 40 litres, it can go roughly 437 km. That’s assuming the previous price of petrol at RM1.88 per litre (I’m a cheapskate, I use RON 92 fuel!). Now with the increased price structure, I will have to pump in an extra RM30 every time I refuel. Supposing that I refuel 3 times in a month (this is already a very conservative assumption), I will require an extra RM1080 per year! The bloody RM625 I get from the road tax rebate is barely enough to cover my extra expenses! Fuck you Pak Lah!
We are talking about a Proton Wira 1.5 automatic, one of the most commonly used cars driven by common Malaysians. If it affects my car, chances are, it will your car too. When Pak Lah drew this structure, he must have the Kancil 660 in mind. Even my Toyota Altis 1.8 consumes less fuel than the Wira. Does it mean that all the rakyat should dump their Protons and buy Kancil’s, Kelisa’s, Vios or City?
I can almost immediately see a domino effect. Everything will cost more. EVERY DAMN THING! Remember, the RM625 is only applicable for private cars with less than 2000cc. Lorries and trucks will most definitely not benefit from this. Neither do airplanes, trains and boats, things used to ferry our daily necessities to our Tesco’s, Carrefour and pasar pagi. I cannot imagine another rice price hike again. (hey, that rhymes! Ahem …) Soon electricity tariff is going to increase, mee goreng, underwear, medicines. And these are just the important stuffs. Don’t get me talking about the camera lens that I planned to buy! Say bye bye to my two daughter’s insurance plan! *sigh…*
On a different note, I’m glad for this structure too. This way, we can still stop Singaporean registered cars from enjoying the subsidized fuel. This mean to say that if you Malaysian who defected down south to become Singaporean PR will not enjoy this benefit for their Singapore-registered cars. They still enjoy some advantage, RM2.70 is still some form of subsidized fuel, albeit in a smaller amount. Unsubsidized fuel still cost RM3.00. Even then, it’s cheaper than their Singapore fuel.
My Wira’s road tax will expire in July. Let’s just see if they will honour their pledge of RM625 for us….