Loose thoughts on PKFZ, scholarship, and H1N1

It was reported that our government spends RM700 million  a year on schoalrship. A hefty sum indeed. We should all be grateful for this hefty sum spent, you might say…

But wait a minute. Have you heard of a thing called Port Klang Free zone? The amount has reported been bloated up to RM7 billion. I have written a few articles on this fiasco last year, , but at that time the cost was about 4.8 billion, an astronomical sum , but now it has reportedly gone up to more than 7 billions.

I have mentioned before  when the cost is estimated to be 4.8 billions that this sum could have been used to build a second Penang bridge plus a LRT system for Penang and we will still have hefty change for other projects.

Now , 7 billions  could have solved the yearly JPA scholarship problems if only this amount is used for the scholarship. At the moment, 700 millions are sustaining about 2000 overseas scholars as well as 10000 local scholars. 7 billions could have easily supported 20000 overseas scholars, meaning that the best 20000 students could have been given free QUALITY education overseas.

Mind you, human resources are the most important investment of any country. If these 20000 come back and join goverment service, it could improve the productivity, efficiency as well as the  quality of our civil service. If the civil service cannot absorb these graduates, even the private sector could gain if placements are made for some of these to take up places in private sector.

Of course you might say this is “If only”  . But this illustrate a very important point. If tax payers money is well spent , it can really do a lot of good for the country. So we should not and cannot tolerate any form of corruption..

I hope MACC will leave no stones unturned in their investigation into this fiasco. 

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As to why the present H1N1 affects more of the younger people, it is now postulated that the older people might have gone through  many of the differet types of  A/ influenza infections over the years (since they have lived relatively more years) that even though this H1N1 is a new strain, certain antigenic properties might have been shared by past infections.

This means that those older people , who have been infected by flu viruses year in and year out and as a consequence developed antibodies against these viral strains, some of their antibodies might have some protection against this new strain.

The protection may not be total (since each viral strain have many many antigenic properties) , but the presence of these antibodies mean that infections in these older people will be milder . For the younger generations who have not gone through as much flu infections (since they have lived relatively fewer years), they may lack these antibodies that might give them certain amount of protection against this new strain.