Our former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad's comment on white-collar graft is not only worrying but also demands serious attention by the powers-that-be.

Malaysians are increasingly seeing a variety of breaches of trust placed in elected leaders. Likewise, employers are no angels. And the business communities continue to cheat and profiteer at the expense of consumers. And workers, being victims of uncontrolled and ever-rising prices, take it out on their employers through a myriad of negative habits and poor productivity.

A commonsense, hard-to-miss (even by the uneducated eye) inventory of some of the many issues would include the following:

  • We build homes and then encroach on such properties with highways and flyovers barely two meters from the rooftops and fences of these properties.

  • We take away land that was ploughed over generations through hard labour and sacrifices, all in the name of so-called development.

  • We horde and hijack resources like diesel only to sell it off at a horrendous profit.

  • We raise the price of fuel because the global prices are escalating, but the poor consumer continues to pay high road tax.

  • We sell with colourful brochures and glossy advertisements, not based on actual deliverables.

    • Despite the fact more Malaysians are obtaining university qualifications, the rate of cheating and shortchanging the common man in the street keeps increasing. Leaders seemingly are hopeless and helpless in truly alleviating the woes of the burdened.

    In medical care for the needy, various permits, logging of timber, building of properties and even in the trading of goods at stores and 'pasar malam', we see the inclination to be dictated by greed and a burning need to get rich quick.

    The question is for how long are the authorities and so-called educated businessmen going to continue this way? Obviously it matters least to them. Who cares what the next generation eats and how it lives?

    Unfortunately, greed, avarice, corruption and lack of accountability breed a vicious Catch-22 malaise.

    Unless and until we put into place an effective and stringent check and balance, all will only be mere talk while the robbers and thieves have it their way.