A timely reminder of climate change in Lok Kawi Park, Sabah

A timely reminder of climate change in Lok Kawi Park, Sabah

Better things for animals at Lok Kawi Park (LKP) Sabah (DE 31 Oct 2018) are both encouraging and in appreciation of wildlife in enclosed area for the public to view them in close by scenario, while those in the wild are out of reach for most people except the bad news of helpless dead animals in the newspapers.

But wildlife is best maintained in the wilderness for all animals and needless to say that.  

Leading biologists in an editorial in the journal Science recently said that if we want to avoid mass extinctions and preserve the ecosystems all plants and animals depend on, governments should protect a third of the oceans and land by 2030 and half by 2050, with a focus on areas of high biodiversity.

It’s not just about saving wildlife, says Jonathan Baillie of the National Geographic Society, one of the authors. It’s also about saving ourselves.

Of course LKP has nothing to compare in term of size and natural environment for the animals in captivity.

If you go to the Internet, there are various websites where foreigners and local do have many mixed comments which should be heeded and acted upon with best interests wherever and whenever possible. 

We should be always mindful of the rising temperature even in Sabah in the climate change scenario. But how to mitigate the damages of rising temperature when such animals were in the wild freely moving to cool and suitable cover. 

But in the zoo like LKP, such privilege is absent.  So caretakers should always on the lookout as how the animals feel in the rising temperature to stay comfortable and even to be active and alive. So how do we to maintain the welfare of such animals in captivity?

Gelugob, one of only 10 Sumatran rhinoceros in captivity worldwide, died on Jan 11, 2014 at the Lok Kawi Wildlife Park.

Sabah Wildlife Department veterinarian Dr Rosa Sipangkui said Gelugob’s age was about 37 years. There were probably less that 150 Sumatran rhinos left in the wild today, in Sumatra and Borneo, he said. 

Sipangkui said Gelugob’s health had deteriorated rapidly since early January and it had refused to drink and ate little. 

Nobody seems to know why this Rhino died in captivity.  I strongly believe it died from heat of rising temperature especially in the big mud pond without any good shade.  I did visit the zoo and noticed that the Rhino was half body in the open pond without moving.  Obviously, it was the heat of the muddy water that prevented the big animal to be active.

I had been to a local fish pond where the fish breeders were complaining that the fishes were not growing in size for months (waiting to die then) and my visiting friend took a temperature gauge to measure the water and found it of excessive heat especially around midday as the fish pond was without trees and shade. 

Like the Gelugob’s case, did anyone of the caretakers take the effort to measure the daily temperature of the muddy water, the normal habitat for that animal?  So caretakers should be observant of the behaviour of all animals at all times. Animals cannot talk but their body languages are powerful to convey messages and the caretakers must learn how to sense these animals in their behaviour especially in worsening climate change with no exception for Sabah.

I do take care of many dogs at home and observe all the time how such domestic animals behave in heat and raining period.  They would be stressed when the midday sun is very hot and would try to go under any shade available.  When rain comes, I would call that dogs suffer from rain-phobia namely avoiding rain at all cost even after the rain is gone as observed.  

It is a normal thing in many houses that pets especially dogs are kept in short lease, small and heated cage where the environment is without any tree to provide for shade.  Animal cannot drink heated water in open spaces.  You expect the animals to survive for long and not to succumb to heat. Some call it cruelty to animals but how ignorant or even guilty can the owners of such pets be so inhumane?

So I hope better things at LKP would do justice for the animals for the public to enjoy and support from the public with good inputs for consideration.

Imagine we need to maintain wildlife in the wilderness in a third of the earth to save ourselves, and certainly Sabah in Borneo has a special role to maintain wildlife in better scenario especially when wildlife is dwindling fast in the degraded natural habitat once the rainforests.

Many people have given up hope of keeping wildlife in the natural habitat which is now the home ground for millions of acres for oil palms –an alien plant – but now things can be looking good as palm oil is no longer lucrative with low prices largely due to the better productivity in Kalimantan where prices are much lower.  So such oil palm growers could be exit and prepared to abandon their investment but we still need much money to restore the rainforests and other endemic plants including fruit trees.  

So the golden opportunity is here with #EcoGeneration as founded by me recently to obtain massive crowdfunding to get involved to bring back the wildlife and the rainforest etc to save ourselves as soon as possible to postpone or mitigate the onslaught of invisible but real climate change already prevailing in Sabah and the world. #EcoGeneration needs the support of every living person on earth for our continued existence in the pleasant climatic environment of my generation post WW2.  Sabah is experiencing for some decades already of maximum temperature of 35°Celcius and the hours of that is much longer daily (certainly many feel that after deforestation).  It is at this temperature that photosynthesis stops and today we are daily fed with agriculture produces “energised” by inorganic cheap fertilisers and other chemicals including pesticides to kill ourselves.  At the high temperature, cultivation becomes difficult and even many poultry farms are now in air-conditioned houses hence more expensive to farmers.  Consumers surely died sooner with higher costs of foods of dubious quality.

You always hear “donate blood to save life” and “donate organs to save lives”, then why neglect this message “Save the degraded earth to save ourselves 7 billions in all and not a few lives. Do it in #EcoGeneration now, and why not? 

 That is the real desperate scenario we are in and in the meantime we hope LKP would consider the survival of the wildlife in captivity there.

So it is most important now in the empirical picture that we save the degraded earth to save ourselves.

Joshua Y C Kong 13/11/2018

any thing new in Tax Reforms 2018 ?

Any thing new in Tax Reforms 2018?

The establishment of the Tax Reform Committee is part of the government’s effort in reforming the tax system to address tax leakages, reduce the existing tax gap and explore new sources of revenue to increase tax collection.

This followed with the Operational Guidelines No. 1/2018 by the Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia with a special program for voluntary disclosure.

  These Guidelines outline the implementation procedures of the Special Program for Voluntary Disclosure (Special Program) for eligible taxpayers following the 2019 Budget announcement by The Honorable Minister of Finance Malaysia on 02 November 2018.

 Hence, this Special Program is offered to encourage taxpayers to make voluntary disclosure in reporting their income and paying tax within the stipulated period. Besides Malaysia, countries offering voluntary disclosure programs include the United States of America, United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, Singapore and Indonesia to name a few.

In the budget 2019, this program is known as “tax amnesty” of sort trying to secure more tax in 2019.

What is listed in Operational Guidelines No.1 /2018 if they are really the only recommendations of the Tax Reform Committee, I believe this fall short of the tax reforms as expected which is much to be desired after 60years of BN Government.

I also believe what is in the special program is largely nothing new as IRB had been doing it over the years selectively.

We certainly need to do better to address tax leakages, reduce the existing tax gap and explore new sources with the proper legal review of the existing system which has been in place for decades.

Certainly I doubt if there are any new sources of revenues as the present one is already loaded with parameters that can bring much hardship to the willing taxpayers largely for a certain group of people.  Would the new sources deemed to be for more revenues further burden the same group of taxpayers?  What about the other groups that do not really pay income tax over the decades?  That would be true justice with fairness throughout.

With the introduction of accrued accounting from cash accounting in the preparation of all business accounts for submission for taxation irrespective of the size of the companies in Malaysia largely SMEs, this can mean much hardship for such willing taxpayers.  Such small and medium enterprises lack the resources to keep accounting in the accrued accounting especially irrecoverable debts turning into bad debts after accounting for tax purposes is indeed very burdensome for all such companies.  Such companies in cash accounting systems would be penalised heavily by the IRB on desk audit or tax investigation with substantial penalties etc.  So I would suggest that there is a threshold of revenue and/or assets of such companies to kick start their business in cash accounting before they embark on accrued accountings.  Even many Government bodies and Government agencies still work on cash accounting.  Any such collection of late penalties and other heavy penalties imposed by IRB which can be very substantial over the years is not to be considered normal collection of additional tax revenues as there is no measure of regular performance.  To the ordinary businessmen such heavy penalties so paid would be passed on the ignorant consumers at large hence cost of living has escalated over the years of mismanagement of the corrupted Government.

There are many areas of tax reforms to right what has been wrong over the decades and such corrective measures now can address the real tax leakages substantially as they are into the billions of ringgit annually.

The question of religion is indeed sensitive and when income tax revenue is concerned there should be any “taboo” matter as Malaysia is truly a secular nation given a truly multi racial and multi religious status we are in.  So why should we have this lopsided treatment when a famous lawyer Puan Siti Kassim and others have clarified that the national religion is indeed a private matter like all other religions between the practitioners and God. Honestly, I do not know how the policies in Income Tax have any connection with the national religion when everyone has to pay their taxes in similar fashion as per secular laws rather than compromised in any other context.

The areas that the state has got itself entangled in the reduction or leakages of income tax are polygamy, children reliefs (father and several wives/ divorcees) and payment of Zakat. 

I believe there are no published figures on tax leakages on Islamic marriages as why should the Government be involved in sort of “lust” of those people by encouraging them with tax allowances and reliefs when the polygamists justify their personal and private habits that their entitlements is based on their financial capabilities.  if that is the case, why should the State subsidies their habits and such people should pay for their practices?  Only the first wife and their children from that marriage be entitled like all other citizens are entitled to all facilities – health, education, housing discounts etc etc -provided by the Government.  So isn’t this lopsidedness be addressed to reduce all financial leakages?  The identity card should state the status of such people.

The other known aspect is Zakat as allowed in the Income Tax system. Just to illustrate the tax leakages of Zakat, it has been disclosed as follows: RM320,348,661.01 (2001) RM373,924,167 (2002) RM408,430,403.56 (2003)  RM473,269 ,093 (2004) RM 573,088,305 .74 (2005)  RM671,095,888.89 (2006) Source : PPZ-MAIWP Annual Report 2006.  Zakat was established since 1991 and RM2.2 b was collected in 2013.  So how much is it in 2017?  Many companies also claim substantial zakat in their tax returns.  Zakat is utilised for that community only.  Is it timely for a tax reform in this area now?

There are also many areas that financial resources are diverted for the national but personal/private religion and they all add up to tens of billions Ringgit annually.

We have missed “globalisation” hence we also miss some the global revenue sources.

Now we in the threshold of global cryptocurrency but has the Government seriously considered the implications for our fiscal economy? At the budget 2019, the Finance Minister announced that the programme would be laid out in 2019.  I believe this cryptocurrency can be like GST at 6% if not properly implemented.  So what about the tax implication here? So if the shares dealings have not any tax implications due to the volatilities of prices thereof even with the realisation of profits in some transactions against some losses in other, cryptocurrencies should also be not implied with taxation.  The price volatility of cryptocurrencies are wide unlike our national currency are subject to depreciation over time and never recover.  Cryptocurrencies are akin to “gambling”.   If the Government intends to tax the cryptocurrencies deals for gains, then it must be prepared to allow the losses too.  Would this item be in the tax reforms?

Joshua Y C Kong 9/Nov/2018