Fleecing the public through commercial transport business?

Perhaps the transport ministry will explain to us the public, why the need to appoint Supreme System Sdn Bhd as the coordinator to certify the health of drivers of commercial vehicles. In other words, the middleman, the legalised rent seeker.

SSSB is the company that has been selected to fleece money from a whole range of workers in the commercial transport market. It will conduct drug tests on drivers, attendants and conductors of commercial vehicles.

It will be charging RM85 per driver.

But supreme system will not carry out the health screening. It will still be done by doctors and labs all over the country. This will be the same scheme or scam as the FOMEMA program on foreign workers in the country.

If doctors are doing the job, why not empanel doctors all over the country with the RTD? In addition, empanel too the many health labs all over the country.

Doctors will be paid RM 30 per head while labs will get RM20 per head. That means, SSSB will get RM35 of buta money. All they needed to do was to submit a working paper ala FOMEMA.

The workers in the commercial vehicles market will undergo the test once a year. How many workers are there in this industry? 2 million? Then SSSB will get to make RM70million a year.

Of course the owners of commercial vehicles will pay for the fees charged-i.e. RM85 per head. Inevitably the higher cost will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher transport charges.

Sakmongkol hopes the government will not have to pay out any money in this scheme. But the more pertinent question is why allow a middleman to milk money for doing nothing?

Why don’t the RTD established its own business unit and work with the doctors’ cooperative and carry out the health screening? This business unit can make some money and plough it back to improve the transport system in this country.