It was announced that another round of piratisation...oops, sorry...privatisation of public services is going to be launched again. Waste disposal, drain cleaning and public toilets were lined up for privatisation. Are there going to be open tenders?

By the way, I thought waste disposal and drain-cleaning services are paid for by the people in the form of assessment fees to municipalities, right? So now no need to pay assessment, is it? Instead, we end up paying some other guys to clean our drains and collect our rubbish, is it?

Remember Indah Water, the guys who are supposed to dispose human waste? So now we are going to have Indah Solid and Indah Drainage going around picking our rubbish and washing our drains.

How are the new assessment rates (if any) going to be structured? Since the municipality guys still need to cut our grass and trim trees and plants, I’m sure the assessment rates would still be there. What are the rubbish-collecting and drain-cleaning charges that they intend to impose on us?

Basically, these services are sub-contracted to private companies by the municipality guys anyway. Don’t we already have Alam Flora running around collecting our rubbish?

Even for public toilets, we normally end up paying some coins before going in to ‘off load’. Go to any park or zoo or bus station (eg Puduraya), we still need to pay, right? Even if we are able to find a free public toilet, it will be a terrifying experience to go in there.

Every time I hear a new announcement like this, I get very confused and end up having more questions. So what’s the deal with this piratisation...oops, sorry again...privatisation exercise?