The Song Will Take Care of Everything

Year 2007 is declared as the Visit Malaysia Year (VMY). A lot has been planned in anticipating the much-hoped-for growth of visitors to Malaysia and recently, it was launched in London to increase the awareness of where Malaysia is and not to forget the images of Orang Utan that signifies what Malaysia is all about. Yes, you can relate to the image of Orang Utan being overly abused to attract people to come to Malaysia when Orang Utan can only be found in Borneo and not all over Malaysia. That is that.

Let’s stay focused and not deviating from the issue I wish to discuss – about 2 days ago, the VMY song was unveiled to the “rakyat” (mass). I think one of the Suwitos belted the song out for the pleasant hearing of the audience and press members. It is almost a MUST that all events or campaigns in Malaysia have to be anchored by a song. As if, the song will take care of everything.

There’s lack of media coverage on what actually is happening and the roles played by various parties in welcoming 2007, as far as local tourism industry is concerned. Have you heard of overall campaign by the hotel association that reduces the rates or various attractive packages in inducing the rate of take-up among the foreigners to come over to Malaysia? Have you heard that the health government combating various epidemics such as dengue in order to increase the confidence among the potential visitors to come over to Malaysia? Instead, there is major cover-up of the status of dengue in Klang Valley as not to hinder the arrivals of tourists. Well, perhaps it is time to compose a song along the line of dengue-rate-is-low-hence-visit-Malaysia kind of song!

Speaking of songs, remember the “Kempen Membaca” or Reading Campaign. Again, there is song penned. What good does it do when the infrastructures are so bad and further discourages the people to read. How many excellent libraries do we have? And on top of that, has the government ever visited the National Library located along Jalan Tun Razak and try to compare that with for example a mediocre Japan’s university. It is in a bad state. The number of quality books is so upsetting. Why can’t we put millions in books and introduce further tax reductions on imported books. Again, what we see on TV every time this campaign hits the annual timeline, a song is composed and played again and again on TV and radio. Let’s not speak of the outdated melody and trying hard to sound upbeat and catchy, the lyrics do no good at all to be absorbed by the ‘rakyat’.

Finally, the same goes to increasing the adoption of computers and cutting-edge communications activities and services. Do you remember the Miss Dato’ K (read: Siti Nurhaliza) who sang the Sayang IT when the IT-adoption campaign was formulated. That was a big joke. She was like a robot that sang the song when I doubt that she knew what IT, ICT, Internet, CPU and RAM are all about.

Let’s go back to the basic. Where is the ICT infrastructure? What ever happened to the computer lab projects that are meant for schools? What happen to them? It was one-off affair for certain quarters to reap “quick” benefits and there was a period of time when several headlines questioned the quality of the labs, delays, missing the objective etc. That is one. In order to enhance the ability of Malaysians to embrace Internet and open up to borderless knowledge acquisition, our broadband price is still one of the highest in the world. We therefore, can conclude why the low adoption rates of ICT among Malaysians.

Having said all these, shall we therefore resort to composition of songs in achieving our target every time we introduce a policy or campaign in this country we dearly love?