Thursday, 10 April 2014

PROGRAM TUKAR MEMISKINKAN ORANG MELAYU ?


Do you all recall all the silly money wasting projetcs during the time of Slumberjack?

In those days I was a regular jogger to the Lake Gardens (Taman Tasik Perdana). Then one day they closed off parts of the Lake Gardens. It was an upgrading project. Cost of project : RM700 Million !!! You could have built a second Penang bridge. Then after the upgrade I went back to the Lake Gardens. There was nothing much. They had laid some extra cemented  tracks. There was some new planting and that was it. Yet the project cost hundreds of millions of Ringgit.  Some crony had obviously ripped off a ton of taxpayers' money.

Then there were those useless projects in Terenganu. The Monsoon Cup ate up about RM1.0 billion or more during its life time. There was some silly crystal mosque project - it was silly because it cost hundreds of millions of Ringgit. That mosque has not created any great Muslims yet.

Now under Najib these things are happening again and again. This is from The Star :

More than 400 Tukar shops record declining sales

    30% shops under Retail Stores Transformation Programme (Tukar) declining sales
    10 stores had to close
    lack of capital, difficulties in securing supplies and managing finances.
    RM149mil was allocated from 2011 to 2013 to implement Tukar
    provided neighbourhood grocery shops with financial assistance and training.
    National Audit Department visited 70 of the 1,609 Tukar shops
    18 stores or 26% of the shops recorded decline in sales.
    failure of store owners to adopt computerised POS system due to lack of training
    advanced age of some shop owners to understand the system
    failure to monitor sales, stocks, use of barcodes and database link to  consultants

This is just more unthinking 'Proton School of Management' stuff.  After 44 years of the NEP the gomen boys still dont understand business. They just cannot get it.

It is NOT lack of capital. RM149 million is a lot of money. Give me RM149 Million and I will set up at least five hypermarts.

I believe under the TUKAR each shop was loaned about RM200,000.  This included an expensive POS system that was totally unnecessary. Mom and pop kedai runcit do not need POS systems. Plus mom and pop will not know what the hell is a POS system. That was money down the drain.

How much did the POS system cost? Who was the supplier? Another crony? Who was the dumb ass consultant who recommended the POS system? A crony of the crony?  The rip off of taxpayers funds was total.

How can a mom and pop store generate enough cash to pay for an expensive POS system? Doesnt anyone know that? That money can be used to buy extra inventory.

Then the TUKAR shops were given loans to buy extra inventory. They had to pay back the loans. So money went to servicing debt. Less money to buy inventory. This will surely result in cashflow constraints or kekangan alir tunai.

The Auditor General says the sales of 1/3 of the shops under TUKAR declined. The question is how were they doing BEFORE they joined TUKAR? Were they financially better off?

Retail sales are a huge function of location. Its always location, location and location. New shelves, new POS systems may not increase your sales if your location is the same.

So what really happened was that BEFORE  the TUKAR these shops were operating at a certain level of sales and cost of operations. After the TUKAR got involved, their costs went up (borrow money to pay for expensive but unnecessary POS systems, new shelves, new inventory). But their sales did not see a commensurate increase.

Whatever money they made now had to go towards paying more hutang. This means less money to replenish their stocks as much. The bigger shelves also look emptier. When a kedai runcit has less inventory on display their sales will go down.

So instead of helping them the TUKAR is now making these 1,609 shopkeepers and their families become poorer.  Since a large number of the TUKAR participants are Malays, it is another case of memiskinkan orang Melayu dulu.

Here is a story :   'A monkey fell in the river and almost drowned. He managed to save himelf. Then he saw fish in the river. He felt he had to save them. The monkey scooped up the fish and held them tightly up in the tree with him. All the fish died.'

The TUKAR consultants have become richer. The crony POS suppliers are richer. The suppliers of the shelves and the inventory are also richer.  The TUKAR shopkeepers have become poorer.

What would I have done? I would have taught the TUKAR people good customer service. You must be super polite to your customers. Keep your shops super clean.  Undertake home delivery in your area. Be 100% honest.

I would have organised buying organisations. Organise the shopkeepers. Take orders from them for standard products, say toothpaste, soap, etc. They must pay cash for their orders. Accumulate the orders and then negotiate for lowest prices from toothpaste suppliers.  This would have lowered the cost to the shopkeepers and given them a higher profit margin.

(My friends among the pharmacies have long been doing this. To get a volume discount, one pharmacy may buy just one type of vitamin. Before doing so, he will confirm orders from his network of friendly pharmacies. So he buys extra and becomes a lower cost supplier  to the other pharmacies. It is group buying to get volume dscounts.)

I recall attending the multi million Ringgit launch (just a waste of taxpayers' money) of the ETP, GTP, the NKEA etc circa 2010. It is all becoming bullshit.

MAS keeps losing money. The rip off at MAS is still going on. That food caterer charges for the same unopened mineral water bottles on return flights. That is ripping off.

Proton keeps losing money. Dont know what is happening to Lotus in the UK. They have made RM900 million losses in 2013.

Kalau macam ini TUKAR sajalah. Mampus pi kat depa. - Sumber

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