Dr Mahathir Mohamad has always been a tad sensitive when it comes to the issue of Malaysian soil landing in Singapore.

mahathir and rais yatim pc 190309 04 In his latest blog posting, the former premier latched on to the words of Works Minister Shaziman Abu Mansor who said that everyday 500 trucks carry sand from Johor to Singapore.

However, Mahathir said a friend had informed him that it was actually 700 trucks. And the 84-year-old medical doctor turned politician noted, "That's a lot of sand."

On the same note, he wondered aloud: "I thought we had stopped selling lorry loads of our land to Singapore."

'It is silica sand'

But Mahathir was further enlightened by the same friend that "the sand is not sand. It is silica sand."

"Singapore needs it to make microchips," he explained.

And with his trademark sarcasm, he added: "I don't know how much sand goes into those tiny microchips. Must be a lot if they need 700 truck loads of sand a day."

Mahathir pointed out that selling raw material gives the least return, and therefore it is better to add value by processing the raw material.

"It cannot be that difficult to produce silica from silica sand. Glass factories do that (I think) all the time. And we do have glass factories in Malaysia.

"Why not produce the silicon wafers and sell them to Singapore?" he asked.

"I think someone is not telling the truth," he added.