Archive for September, 2007
Friday, September 28th, 2007
According to Datuk G Palanivel, Deputy Women, Family and Community Development, the Welfare Services Department did a study and found that Kuala Lumpur beggars earn RM70 – RM260 a day (that’s RM1,400 – RM7,800 per month).
And of course beggars don’t pay any income tax, do they?
Factors affecting income are:
- number of days “working”; I assume the guys that earn more money than the salary of an average state government department director are working every day of the month.
- begging location; presumably if you beg at places where there are many people and/or high-class areas you could earn more
- how good they are at facial expressions and body language. If you are very good at putting on a sad face, then you will earn more
They make more than some “classier” professions: a receptionist in KL only earns about RM1,200 / mth.
What makes it a more attractive “career option” is that under provisions in the Destitute Persons Act 1977, no punitive action can be taken against beggars, including those that *pretend* to be one!
Interested? I can already imagine adventurous professionals or financially-desperate ones taking a week’s leave and fly to KL to test the waters.
The social stigma and loss of face aside, you are *not* breaking any laws and this is much better than attempting to solve your financial woes through loan sharks, am I correct?
Before you jump on the next plane to KL though, consider this: in November 2004, the Ministry’s Parliamentary Secretary Datin Paduka Chew Mei Fun said that the Act would be amended to make begging an offence.
And the amended Act is slated to be tabled in Parliament by the end of this year.
However, unlike some places like Medan, it will still not be an offence to give money to beggars. That means generous people don’t have to worry – it’s only the beggars that have to play hide and seek with the authorities.
Datuk Palanivel does not condone giving out money to beggars, but advised the public to refer them to the Welfare Services Department.
However, I think the number of beggars reported is too low to be realistic. The Department said up to July, there were *only* 284 beggars in the whole of Malaysia. If you think that’s a typo, the next sentence in the newsreport said out of that number, 13 are kids and 60 foreigners.
In the next paragraph, it said in 2006 there were 1,046 beggars in the whole country and in 2005, there were 911.
Source: Daily Express, 20th Sept 2007
Posted in general | 1 Comment »
Monday, September 24th, 2007
Ashop Commerce is a 4-year-old provider of shopping cart software, internet programming and digital imaging.
They focus on small to medium sized businesses, meaning they are worth checking out if you are looking to build or even start the online side of your business.
With the catchphrase “selling online has never been so easy”, the software needs no installation. It enables you to accept payments via credit cards online and immediately.
The many, in fact thousands of features they have is only matched by their ease of use and fully customisable design.
The cost of signing up is also affordable, directly competing with other, more established sites, starting at less than USD40 per month.
They claim to have helped thousands of merchants become successful, so that is a track record to be proud of.
The shopping carts have comprehensive features, including full integration with all major banks, gateways and third party processors including the popular PayPal. Checkout security via 128 bit SSL is built in.
In addition, their shopping carts are 100% Search Engine Optimised (SEO), meaning they will ensure products you offer rank as high as possible on major search engines. They also assured that since this is a dynamic field, it will be a continuous process.
Your website’s design will also be fully customisable without the usual restrictions, meaning you can create your own images and even flash animations.
Finally, they host all shopping carts on powerful and secure infrastructure, which includes fraud alerts, 24×7 monitoring, multiple daily backups and guaranteed 99.8% uptime.
Perhaps best of all, they have a fully functional 10-day free trial, so you can really feel what it is really like, unlike some vendors who offer only part of the full functions. The best part is, they won’t even ask for you credit card number for that purpose!
** This is a sponsored post.
Posted in spsd | No Comments »
Sunday, September 23rd, 2007
Can you imagine putting up pictures of loved ones, even your pets on beddings: blankets, duvets and pillows?
Yes, that means you can have a photo blanket, not just the usual photo album!
Well, that is exactly Vision Bedding offers.
They offer photorealistic-quality images and the ability to customise the designs online. Using state-of-the-art technology, your chosen pictures are specially dyed into whatever you wanted.
They claim to have the sharpest, most vivid-colored custom photo product in the market.
They also offer pre-designed bedding where you can choose from a multitude of pictures to be printed onto your beddings.
Posted in spsd | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 18th, 2007
As reported by Capgemini and Merril Lynch’s World Wealth Report 2007.
These people are called High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI).
Other highlights:
- Added up, HNWIs are worth USD37.2 trillion
- Highest growth in HNWI population: Singapore, India, Indonesia, Russia
- Most HNWIs live in North America (3.2 million), followed by Europe (2.9 million), Asia Pacific (2.6 million), Latin America (400,000), Middle East (300,000) and lastly, Africa (100,000). Actual wealth distribution follow the same pattern.
- Ultra HNWIs (UHNWI) are those with assets worth more than USD30 million – there are 95,000 of them worldwide
- There are almost 40,000 UHNWIs in North America, more than 20,000 in Europe, almost 20,000 in Asia-Pacific, about 10,000 in Latin America and a few thousand in the Middle East and Africa.
- HNWIs allocated their financial assets as follows: equities (31%), fixed income (21%), cash/deposits (14%), real estate (24%) and alternative investments (10%).
The report can be downloaded free of charge from Merril Lynch’s website.
Source:
Posted in general | No Comments »
Monday, September 3rd, 2007
The Star reported on 2nd September that according to a study done by Associate Professor Dr Tengku Aizan Hamid of the Gerontology Institute, UPM, 66.1% of Malaysians over 60 years of age earn RM510 or less per month. That can be considered poor.
The number of persons over the age of 60 in Malaysia is now about 1.4 million. This is about 5% of the population. By 2020, this number is expected to grow to more than 3.4 million.
That means there are more than 925,000 persons over the age of 60 in this country surviving on RM510 or less per month.
In fact, 5.7% (79,800 persons) has no income at all.
A mere 0.8% (11,200 persons) has an income of more than RM3,000 per month.
At the highest end, 0.3% (4,200 persons) has an income of more than RM5,000 per month.
source
The Star
Posted in general | No Comments »
