blogtunm.blogspot.com Tun M
1. By the time I visited MAHA Show at Serdang Saturday morning, 1.8 million people had been ahead of me. The papers reported today that altogether 2.7 million people visited the show this year.
2. This year’s show is clearly bigger and better. The Ministry of Agriculture and its agencies like MARDI and FAMA must be congratulated.
3. I noted that the Ministry of Agriculture has made tremendous progress in upgrading Malaysian agriculture. The farmers and fishermen should not languish in poverty if they make use of the techniques developed by MARDI, FAMA and other ministry agencies and departments.
4. I was most impressed by the quality of the fruits and their packaging. They are world-class. The Government has also gone a long way in helping people in the rural areas to market even their casual products. To those keen on doing something for themselves a motorbike with a side-car is available at highly subsidised price to go into the villages to buy kampung produce and sell to the outlets set up by FAMA. I am told that this scheme can give an income of more than RM1000-00 a month.
5. All kinds of machines are exhibited which can help small businesses. Among them is a bread-making machine which makes bread from rice or wheat grains simply by putting in the necessary ingredients inside a rice cooker like apparatus, switching it on and in 3 hours fresh bread would be produced.
6. We love the labour of making dodol, a kind of social activity which brings friends and neighbours in the village together. Now you need only to switch on the huge pot or bowl and in four hours the dodol maker will deliver whatever amount of dodol you want for Raya. Literally no sweat.
7. I was particularly interested in the cattle. They are big and look like the huge European animals. I don’t think we can free ourselves from imported beef but really we can produce some of the beef ourselves. I had a lunch of steak produced by a Malaysian farmer and it was tender and delicious.
8. I read in the papers complaints on transportation. VIPs like my wife and I were well taken care off. But others had to walk or to queue for the special buses.
9. Yes, MAHA organisers should take note and improve transportation. But the show was free except for a RM3 parking fee for cars.
10. We are so used to getting things free and complaining about what we get as well. I know I will not be popular but I think paying something for a show like MAHA is not too great an imposition. Then maybe the transportation can be improved. I would suggest that transport be privatised. I am not thinking of more money for my cronies, but Government is notorious for not caring much especially when it gets a monopoly.
11. Of course children and OKU should be exempted from paying.
