I refer to the recent yet-to-be published government audit report on Approved Permits (AP) which exposes serious irregularities.

According to the Singapore Straits Times, the report said: ‘The audit revealed that a large number of businessmen were hawking their import permits to mainly ethnic Chinese car dealers who dominate the country’s luxury vehicle dealerships.

‘Many of the companies involved in the AP business were poorly managed, lacked adequate funding and in some extreme cases, even forged government documents when importing luxury cars.’

The AP system should be abolished. These APs are the cause of suffering of every single Malaysian in Malaysia. Everybody suffers paying their monthly repayments for their cars due to the original high price.

By right, if the AP did not exist in the first place, most Japanese cars would merely cost RM40,000 or less. And this figure includes all the relevant taxes and duties already paid.

Why is a Honda City priced at about RM45,000 in Singapore whilst here, the same car is priced at RM80,000? Isn't Singapore the country with the most expensive cars in the world?

Apparently not. Malaysia is. Even our other neighbour, Thailand, has far cheaper cars than us. A Toyota Altis and a Honda Civic in Thailand are about RM70,000. Here, well, they are all priced around RM120,000. Such a shocking huge difference.

Who suffers most? The answer is every single Malaysian.

And at what detriment? Because one is paying like RM800 for his car a month, he definitely gives lesser food and a lower quality of life to his family and children.

The moral of the story is that the AP system causes a few people to get richer whilst the majority of the masses suffer a lesser quality of life due to the fact that they have lesser disposable incomes resulting from servicing very high loans to own their vehicles in the first place.

It seems like our government is more concerned about the few AP permit holders than the masses who really suffer.

It has become common knowledge that the bumiputera AP permit holder merely sells his AP permits to the non-bumiputera dealership. So what is the whole purpose of the AP permit in the first place? Has its original aims and goals been achieved?

If one digs deeper into the purpose of the AP system, we find that it began in the mid-1970s to encourage bumiputera businessmen to venture into car distribution, which was dominated then by foreigners and the non-bumiputera.

However, it looks like, other than one or two successful bumiputera businessmen who have succeeded in the car distribution industry, the others merely sell their AP permits to non- bumiputeras for a quick buck.

And this has been going on rampantly for the past 30 years. It is obvious that the whole AP system is a complete failure.

It has not only failed to achieve its objectives and goals but it has caused a lot of hardship and suffering to the people in Malaysia who own cars and who need them to earn a decent living.