The feared night mare has really arrived .

Talk of a price hike of oil has been going on for some time . It was expected to be announced officially in August . As such I did not pay a heed to it . I thought I would cross the bridge when the time comes .In other words I did not want to be unduly worried over something that is about 2 months away . But when TV3 suddenly stopped it's programme at 6.30 pm yesterday to air the announcement by the PM himself of a price hike of petrol and diesel ,I was taken a back . What was really shocking was the price increases was not 20 or 30 sens per litre but a whopping 78 sens ( from RM 1.92 to RM 2.70 per litre ) which when calculated to the percentage , was more than 40% ( 40.6 % ) increase of the present .While diesel was increased by RM 1/- ( from RM 1.50 to RM 2.50 per litre ) . This would also mean that if you normally pay RM 100/- , after midnight yesterday ( 5thAugust 2008 ) , it would cost RM 140/- for the same amount of petrol . This is really a big chunk of my hard earned pension money , would have to be spent on petrol .

After Maghrib prayer yesterday ,I went to town with the idea of filling up my tank before it was incresed by midnight . I also asked my wife to fill up her tank . I went to 3 petrol stations but after 2 hours queeing up I still failed to get near to any one of them . They were all packed with cars .I had to abandon queeing up because of the call of nature and had to ease myself .I came home empty handed . Luckily my wife managed to fill up her tank after an hour . She was wise by going to the Sri Andalas Petrol station which was not so packed at that time .

As usual the increase in price of pertol and diesel would be followed by price increases of all other goods ,especially food items . As it is , without the price increase of petrol and diesel , prices of food items are already spiralling up by the day , what more with the price increase recentlty announced . What was feared -the night mare has really happened . The rakyat are really feeling the pinch . Every where I go especially when I talk to the kampong people or the low income earners in the towns whom I normally meet at the market , I could see the expression on their faces which tells their dissappointment with the government for not managing the country well .Most of them knows that Petronas is raking more than RM 600 billion profit yearly from the oil price hikes .They questioned how the Petronas money was spent to the benefit of the rakyat ?