YOURSAY | 'Without oil money from Petronas, we are looking at a grim future.'

WSJ: Hundreds of Petronas employees may lose jobs

SusahKes: Very soon, if Prime MInister Najib Abdul Razak, Umno and company do not take heed of these alarming signs, they are going to have a very frustrated middle class group in the midst of society.

Worse, they might leave the mess for someone else to pick up. Either way, if Putrajaya remains on its 'business-as-usual" mode, you and I are looking at a grim future.

Anonymous #70881335: The goose that lays the golden eggs is getting a bit tired. Hope it will continue to lay the eggs after a good rest. If not, the idiots who depend on the eggs will starve to death.

Allforit: Let's just stick to the topic of Petronas. When I was in Terengganu, 75 percent of the hotel's occupants were Petronas staff and family. One of them told me it was part of the staff benefits.

So these people have been having it too good. It is a well-known fact that oil and gas companies spend money as if there is no tomorrow. Take it from someone who has worked for oil company Total/Elf.

Hopeful123: A good and far-thinking government would have utilised the income generated by Petronas wisely. They have squandered all the money for years and now it's payback time.

Norway is a fine example of how oil money is used for the benefit of the nation in the long term. Malaysia is famous for the short-term syiok sendiri syndrome.

Odysseus: If Petronas is cutting staff, how about other government departments that are living off contributions from Petronas? They should also reduce their costs and manpower to bring the overall cost of running the government lower.

The cabinet should show the way too, and reduce itself in size, with ministers taking pay cuts.

Jaycee: There is no need to lay off staff. They only need to pull out from the F1 sponsorship.

The CEO had said that spending billions of dollars in F1 sponsorship resulted in 400 percent in brand awareness. The question is, how is this translated to actual money in the company's profit and loss statement?

Anonymous #44199885: If the total number of Petronas employees is 53,000, laying off a few hundred is not going to be of much benefit. It is hard to get good people and it's a waste to lay them off after the investment in training them.

Better to cut costs by dropping unnecessary expenditure like the F1 sponsorship.

Petronas is already well known and is an oil producer. It does not need the publicity as it is not selling direct to consumers, except for a few petrol stations in Malaysia.

Thana55: Well, it is going to be another repeat of the Malaysian Airlines (MAS) fiasco.

Overstaffed, no contingency planning during good times, lack of meritocracy, lack of transparency, etc. So I am not surprised.

Gaji Buta: Hundreds from 53,000 going to make a difference? Maybe, if the laid off are the top earners.

MA: Funny we have to get these types of news reports that come from thousands of miles away.

Wondering if our mainstream media is fat on dedak, that they cannot open their mouths anymore.

Mosquitobrain: MO1 had confidently asked for six months to fix 1MDB.

Many months have passed, but nothing has changed, except for the worse. With crude oil prices hitting rock bottom, it is even more difficult to fix 1MDB's big 'holes'.

Merdeka: Stop leakages and cronyism. That is already half the solution.

Annonymous: The fears the concerned rakyat have been raising the last 40 years are becoming a reality with this hideous situation.

Malaysia is the largest welfare state in the world, where the minority have to feed the majority, a bloated civil service in the millions, low productivity exacerbated by the continuous brain-drain in millions, zero meritocracy, where the New Economic Policy (NEP) is abused to feed the rich, and institutions in the country are helmed by incompetent and corrupt politicians.

The recent strings of arrests by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) are only the tip of the iceberg. The worse is yet to come. What happened to the trillions reaped by Petronas the last four decades, when the sun was shining?

Wg321: China is eyeing Petronas, if it is for sale, just like our power plants.

Tony Soprano: The way Malaysia is run, I can foresee a 40 to 50 percent chance of Malaysia imploding the way Venezuela already has - an oil-rich country so mismanaged that it now must import a small amount of American sweet light crude, to get its vastly reduced exports of heavy oil to market, and where the majority (not just some) of the people are literally starving.

Analyser: Now that there are no more funds for the greedy. They will now sell the country's assets and squeeze the rakyat to maintain their lifestyle.

Meow: Najib now has a good reason to increase the goods and services tax (GST).

SSG: It is human resources that make a country rich, not its natural resources. If natural resources make a country rich, then Brazil would be the richest country in the world, but it is not. For instance, Japan and Singapore have no natural resources, but are considered very rich.

However, I do not condone the way Singapore has become rich at all. Even though I have used this city state as an example. For instance, if all the Chinese Malaysians were to return to Malaysia and started working here, then the Singapore economy would most likely collapse.

The reasoning I am getting at here is that our best talent/brains (i.e. our human resources) have left the country because of policies they must have considered unfair to them. So Malaysia can keep living in the fantasy land, with its New Economic Policy (NEP) and grand transformation programmes. These are not going to make the country any richer.

As the years go by, it will become increasingly clear that those who benefited from the NEP will be the biggest losers.

Annonymous: Malaysia's external debt is a hideous RM850 billion? Singapore's hardworking ants, meanwhile, have been slogging and making hay while the sun shines; developing and uniting the nation and saving every excess penny.

Just 10 minutes away, it's another world.

While the sun shines, the supremacist grasshoppers rule, having a jolly good time: dancing and spending away, flying round the world, splurging, and accumulating huge debts like there's no tomorrow.

But Singapore, with no oil and gas and zero natural resources, has zero debts and S$3.45 billion in surplus. Yes, just 10 minutes away, it is one of the world's safest, peaceful, crime-free, cleanest and united nations, one of the most developed, richest and incorrupt countries.

It's Asia's No 1 financial centre, has the world's best airline and the best airport, world's most efficient and best port, one of the highest literacy rates, and best education systems in the world, best universities in Asia. Also Singapore $1 = RM3.

Malaysia is just the opposite. Thanks to Umno.

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