Daily Lessons from Life 01 August 2014 - Malaysian bus drivers stage strike at Johor checkpoint

MH17 Updates - Dutch investigators said more remains found at the crash site. RIP and properly closure for these souls.

"Malaysian bus drivers stage strike at Johor checkpoint - CNA 01 August 2014

SINGAPORE: Malaysian buses ferrying factory workers into Singapore staged a strike early Friday morning (Aug 1) at the Johor checkpoint to protest new toll charges imposed by the Malaysian government.

The Malaysian authorities confirmed to Channel NewsAsia reporter Sumisha Naidu later in the morning that the strike had ended. Chinese daily Sinchew in Malaysia reported that the traffic situation had returned to normal by 8am, after the local authorities promised to look into the revised toll charges."

An interesting development and a touch of great timing and daring-do by the Malaysian bus drivers involved though it was also reported that the Malaysian authority viewed their actions as totally unacceptable and promised to punish them severely!

Lessons for me are:

1. rules makers make rules to charge certain expenses on the citizens and users. Can the users, citizens or otherwise, protest? Do they have a way to get their cases heard before the 'changes' are made? If they can, would it hampered the efficiency of decision making, assuming the quality of the decision making is good?;

2. if the users or people affected by the 'new rules or changed rules' negatively, are there channels for them to properly express their disagreement or displeasure? If not, can they take the 'rules' or more seriously, the laws, into their own hands? The answer to if they can take the laws into their own hands is obviously: 'NO! They cannot!' Like in this case while the drivers who initiated the 'strike', no matter how short-lived, had created a huge impact on thousands of people's lives in that short 1 hour!;

3. Now that this 'strike' had taken place, where does it leave the 'rules makers'? And the affected parties like the bus drivers, bus operators and the commuters that use their services? It is reasonable to say that with the weekend coming, the rules makers will be working overtime to plan how to continue to implement the 'changes' made and make them stick without allowing further disturbances from the bus drivers. I don't see the rules makers giving way here. it will take a powerful 3rd party to get involved before proper consultation and discussion can take place.

My reading is: the change will stay. People will complain and bitch about it for a while. After that, people will just accept it and move on as long as someone get paid their dues and the costs will eventually be passed to the users and commuters!