The year 2015 is easily the toughest year for those of low and middle-class income, especially for those who are staying in the city, as the cost of the living today is unbearable.

The Land Public Transport Commission (Spad) made an announcement of drastic increases in fares of taxis and express buses which began in May 2015. The taxi fares went up by 20 to 67 percent; meanwhile for express bus the fares increased by 22.6 percent.

Later in early December 2015, the consumers again had to take a deep breath when KTMB made an announcement on the increasing KTM fares for the KTM Komuter by 4sen per kilometer (from 11sen to 15sen per km). This increase of Komuter fares is about 100 percent.

MyRapid has also increased the Light Rail Transit (LRT) and monorail fares, and additionally, Express Rail Link Sdn. Bhd (ERL) also made an announcement on increasing fares of ERL in December 2015. The new fares for ERL which is RM55 from RM35 per person will begin on Jan 1, 2016.

KTMB, ERL and MyRapid last revised their fares about a decade ago. These delegated companies have suffered losses because the costs like wages, electricity, maintenance and other costs go up every year but fares have not gone up for years. KTMB, ERL and MyRapid are not able to bear the losses, hence they were left with no option except to increase the fares.

The rising fares of the public transport have been reviewed and been approved by the cabinet. However, the review made by them did not consider the public view about rising fares. The public were not consulted on the matter and were only aware of the fare increases when it was announced.

The drastic changes in public transport fares have become a heavy burden for people with low income and middle income. For the average family that takes public transport, they would spend 20 to 30 percent of their income on public transport fares. Previously, people used public transport as their daily transportation to save on their cost of living, apart from avoiding heavy traffic jams.

However, today the fare of public transport is beyond their limitation. The consumers have been left with no option but to cut their budget and to save their money.

The increment of public transport fares will seem reasonable if their services also show an improvement, such as the trains or buses should arrive and depart on time and provide longer LRT coaches especially during peak hours, as well becoming more frequent. In conclusion, the rising fares of public transport should be audited in order to justify the reasons of the increasing fares which are extremely high for the low and middle class consumers.

The quality of the public transport should be improved, as well as the fares increase. Therefore, transportation auditing should be done in order to ensure its quality from the aspects of comfort, security, reliability and good services.

NUR IMANI ABDULLAH is research and policy executive, Federation of Malaysian Consumers Associations (Fomca).