While many developing and developed countries have legislation to deter monopolies, Malaysia is a country where monopolies are either state-sponsored or supported. It is little wonder that the quality of service provided by most of them are less than encouraging for lack of competition and with little accountability. There are two of these I wish to highlight here:

The prepaid rip-off: My wife, a homemaker, for convenience’s sake, had recently bought a handphone and had registered with one of the outlets for a Digi prepaid service. She had topped-up with a RM10 reload. Not one for using it often, after a few days she found that she could not make any calls despite the fact that she had a credit balance of about RM6.

On enquiry, she realised that if she wants to make further calls, she has to ‘top-up’ again because the earlier top-up is limited to a certain number of days, never-mind that she had still has a credit balance. In other words, Digi is telling us that the credit balance is of no use until and unless my wife pays them more money.

I have never realised this problem because I have probably always used within the specified time whatever amount I have reloaded. This grossly unfair one-way imposition of such terms by Digi smacks of unfair trading chauvinism without regard to fairness towards consumers.

That the domestic trade and consumer affairs ministry has not yet noticed this trend of ‘imposed culture’ by such telcos is mind-boggling, to say the least.

Touch-n-Go (TNG): Tolls are not such a favourite topic. The recent Bandar Mahkota Cheras fiasco only goes to show the displeasure of the common folks with what has been forced down their throats.

One may still recall of the promise once made by the former Works Minister S Samy Vellu that the government would provide the choice of alternative routes when and where tolls have been imposed on certain routes. Of course, such promises are only vaguely remembered and conveniently and promptly forgotten.

Recently at the Shah Alam toll booth, someone flashed me a TNG card. I bought the RM30 card but I was told that the credit availability would only be RM20 and that the balance RM10 was for the card itself. Can you imagine that I am paying RM20 in advance for the toll operator to use, essentially giving them a cash facility but I have to ‘reward’ him for using my cash advance by paying him another RM10 for the card through which I pay in advance.

Probably, this can only happen in Malaysia. If the toll operator wants to encourage me to use the TNG service, then the RM10 should be absorbed by him. Maybe most of us did not mind such practices in the past but with the spiraling cost of most essentials, we need to be mindful of where our money goes.

The ‘convenience’ factor now seems to be generally misused to the advantage of toll-operators and it looks like wherever and however they can make a dime, they just go for it. Burdened with spiraling costs, one can only wonder how the ordinary folk would be able to sustain a family in a decent way.

It is sad that the government of the day, to an extent, seems to have turned a blind eye to such practices reinforcing the belief of the common folk that they have to turn to alternative sources to air their grievances.

The pulse of the common man is either not felt by the government or it is simply not bothered with what is faced by us although times and again it keeps telling us of how ‘sincere’ the government is.

It is this kind of built-up frustration that forced the common folks to turn away from the government. Hopefully, they are listening now.