Datuk High On Drug

The 29-year-old man with a Datuk Seri title accused of assaulting three People's Volunteer Corps (Rela) members has tested positive for drugs.

The suspect, according to deputy inspector-general of police Noor Rashid Ibrahim, was under the influence of drugs when he surrendered himself on Monday. Urine test showed that he was positive for drugs. Noor Rashid said the suspect also had a record for drug offence and police are investigating if he was under the influence of drugs during last Friday's assault incident.

The businessperson had surrendered himself at the Ampang police station where he showed up in a luxury Bentley car. Meanwhile, Noor Rashid said the police have found no evidence with regard to the claim that the suspect owned a firearm.

The suspect has been accused of assaulting three Rela personnel identified as Ranbo Lee, 27, Jackie Leong, 21, and Melvin Cheong, 19. In the 6.30am incident near a Chinese temple in Ampang, the suspect reportedly lost his temper when the Rela personnel told him to move his Toyota Vellfire, which was obstructing traffic.

Lee suffered bruises and swelling on his left eye. It is also understood that Leong was kicked and Cheong was hit on the back of his head. The suspect, who has been remanded until Friday, was also accused of offering the victims RM10,000 each via a middleman to retract their police reports

Police have been urged to investigate the source of wealth of the "Datuk Seri" caught for assaulting three Rela personnel. Kampung Tunku assemblyman Lau Weng San alleged that the 29-year-old suspect (pic) was a big player in the money game scheme here."The police should not just focus their investigations into the assault of the three personnel. Check the source of his income. Investigations must be conducted into money laundering and fraud," he said.

Lau said this when speaking to reporters after attending a meeting with police from the Federal Commercial Crime Investigation Department on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, former Selangor state executive councillor Ronnie Liu agreed with the stand of the Council of Federal Datuks urging the ruler who awarded the suspect with the title to revoke it. "Those undeserving of these titles should not have them," he said.

It was reported that the Council of Federal Datuks president Tan Sri Danny Ooi expressed sadness over the incident where the suspect was seen on video assaulting three Rela officers. Ooi said any individual with good standing and holding a title should not resort to such actions.

"They must respect people in uniform. I hope if this news goes back to the Ruler who awarded the title, it should be taken away from the man," he added.

Sex For Employment - MIC

An MIC branch leader has quit his post following the circulation of his telephone conversation with a woman, where he promised employment for her teenage daughter in exchange for sex with the girl.

The audio clip is being circulated on the messaging app WhatsApp.

In the eight-minute 49-second clip, the 56-year-old politician, who is a Tamil school teacher, boasted to the mother that he had helped a lot of girls who had just completed their SPM examinations secure jobs after sleeping with them.

"Please tell me the timing and where, and how long the session can last. If she's not interested, please tell me, I will drop this offer, as there are a lot of other girls waiting," he said.

The teacher also complained to the mother that the teenager was not responding to his calls or messages. He also told her that the sexual encounter would be one-off and once he had helped the daughter in question to secure a job, they would be strangers.

"Don't waste this wonderful opportunity," he added. In the conversation, the man also named several individuals, whom he claimed would help him secure jobs for girls he had recommended.

Indonesia Push Islamic Microfinance

Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, in its intention to improve the financial inclusion of the large number of unbanked citizens, and to improve the financial ecosystems in communities and to reduce the exposure of small business owners or even entire villages to informal lending structures, is expanding the network of official microfinance institutions across the country.


The Financial Services Authority of Indonesia, or OJK, has granted operating licences to ten new Islamic microfinance institutions, which are expected to empower communities and small businesses and generally improve public welfare in its target areas. According to the OJK, the establishment of these new Islamic microfinance institutions was part of its financial inclusion programmes that involved community figures such as clerics who run Islamic boarding schools, or pesantren, as they are called locally. Through that channel, the microfinance institutions are expected to provide wider financial access to low-income communities living in the vicinity of those boarding schools.


“Islamic microfinance institutions aim to improve public welfare by empowering communities around Islamic boarding schools,” says Wimboh Santoso, chairman of OJK’s board of commissioners.


“These institutions have a number of main features: they provide assistance to, and approach community groups; they do not collect funds from the public; their funding comes from donors, and they distribute financing with low profit rates at around 3%,” he said. 


Each of the new micro lenders received a licence and is being supervised by the OJK. Customers will get basic training before receiving any financing, as well as regular assistance for business set-up or expansion as an additional service. The money for the lending programme comes from donors who want to support community empowerment programmes and contribute to initiatives to create more community institutions, including Islamic boarding schools and other social infrastructure.


“The OJK will continue promoting Islamic microfinance programmes to other Islamic boarding schools across Indonesia. We plan to recommend them to be the preferred microfinance programmes of the National Committee for Shariah Finance —whose chairman is the President himself,” Wimboh said, referring to Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo who launched the said committee in July this year as a supportive framework for Shariah-compliant banking in the country, with the eventual goal to make Indonesia a regional hub for Islamic finance.


Islamic microfinance has a long tradition in Indonesia, mostly in rural areas. The country is believed to have the largest Islamic microfinance sector in the world as part of its cooperative banking ecosystem which comprises around 5,500 mostly rural financial entities with assets of about $590mn. The cooperative banking sector is institutionalised within the country’s financial industry, alongside banking, the insurance sector and capital markets. 


According to forecasts, there is potential for its asset volume to reach up to $735mn over the coming years, and Islamic microfinance would be an essential driver for that.
The reasons why Indonesia is such a fertile ground for dedicated microfinance providers are that the traditional banking sector has been slow or not interested in developing meaningful products for the mainly rural target groups, fearing that achievable profits would not merit the engagement. 

Furthermore, Indonesia is a geographically, ethnically and linguistically highly diverse nation with at least 17,000 inhabited islands and over 300 ethnic groups with their own languages, which means that banking services need to be tailored for those segmented target groups to make them more accessible, which is why the usual top-down approach of large retail banks does not really work out well in such environments. 


It turned out that a community approach to microfinance is a much better fit as it is capable of integrating local customs and community networks and developing an awareness of the respective cultural norms. For example, the rules of communal risk taking or the ways social collaterals are formed and utilised in community banking. This is also where Islamic believes of sharing and mutual social support come into play.


Fundamental for this is the main difference of Islamic microfinance to conventional finance, namely that in the latter case funding does not come from investors who expect a certain return, but from donations. In Indonesia, the principle is that Islamic microfinance institutions act as a collector and distributor of zakat, compulsory charitable contributions of wealthier Muslims, infaq, a type of charity in Islam that is given without any expectation of reward or return, and sadaqah, another form of voluntary giving that encompasses any act of charitable giving done out of compassion, love, friendship or generosity. 

Other sources of funding for Islamic microfinance institutions in Indonesia are grants, endowments and assets from social funds. Profit from the microfinance lending cover operational costs of the lender, and the rest is funnelled back to develop community projects or cover social welfare expenses.

Accelerating Expenditure Lower Revenue

The Malaysian government’s expenditure, particularly in healthcare and pension payments, are set to soar over the medium and long term as the country’s population ages.                                                            The country’s revenue from income taxes, on the other hand, will decline as people move away from salaried jobs in line with Industry 4.0 and the Internet revolution, which will see more freelance opportunities arising, said EPF economies and capital markets general manager Nurhisham Hussein.

Speaking at the 2018 Post-Budget Dialogue organised by the Malaysian Economic Association, Nurhisham said the evolution of the country’s expenditure and revenue collection was inevitable, and needed to be addressed.

“I am going to say something unpopular - my wish would be that income taxes were actually going up, expenditure was going up and that the Government was borrowing more - and let me outline why,” he said.

“Within the next 30 years or so, we will be an aged economy, with about 15% to 20% of the population above the age of 60 years. If you look at household expenditure and how it evolves over time, in the area of healthcare specifically, the bulk of it is during the last two years of life,” he said.

Nurhisham stressed that healthcare costs were set to increase in line with the aging population. The allocation for the health ministry this year is about RM27bil and this is going to increase in double digit rates over the next 30 years. We need to pay for that if we want to maintain the healthcare system that we currently have,” he said.

Secondly, he noted that the size of families were decreasing, apart from more people choosing to not get married or have children. Being Asian, we think that families will take care of the aged, but the family support system is disappearing, and eventually, this situation will entail support from the government,” he added.

Thirdly, he pointed out that government expenditure on the payment of pensions will also be increasing rapidly. I think as far as load on government finances is concerned, pension is going to be the number one issue over the coming years.

“Even if we reform the pension system today, there would be a transition period of about 50 to 60 years. We will still be paying pensions for today’s civil service, 60 years from now,” he said.

On the income side, Nurhisham said the prospects were equally worrying. We are talking about the evolution of the workforce. Even today, if we look at the EPF membership, we have close to 15 million in the labour force and less than half are in the EPF system. And out of this, only about two thirds of the contributors have a regular salary,” he said. This, he said, meant that only about four million people were getting paid on a regular basis.

Citing Industry 4.0 and the internet revolution, Nurhisham says it was inevitable that the culture of work in the future would change. People will be less inclined to take salaried jobs and there will be more freelancers - it will be all about the gig and sharing economy.

“This means less salaried work, and it is going to have an impact in terms of income tax collection,” he explains. This, he stressed, showed the need for a shift in thinking about how the government would fund its activities in the future.

Another issue is the demand for crude oil, which is likely to be reduced in the future. 

Several governments, including the UK, France and China have already outlined plans to ban petrol vehicles by 2030. Demand will probably be good for the next few years as Opec extends production cuts, but in the long term, revenue from the energy sector is going to continue to decrease,” he said.