The long waited GST finally rolled out in April this year. It had initially caused inconvenience to traders especially those in grocery, hardware and Chinese medical shops. It not only incurred additional expenditure, and other resources to meet the requirements, it also wasted our time in ensuring that entries are correctly entered to avoid facing any subsequent legal matters.
The Domestic Trade Department’s checks merely for sundry shops and hypermarkets to ensure no high price hike in daily items seem a failure, as restaurants, hawkers and coffee shop operators grab the opportunity to make fantastic profits, cheating the consumers, although the items they use are classified under zero rated tax free items. Consumers are forced to pay a high price due to these irresponsible traders. A bowl of mee was dearer by 30 to 50 sen.
The authorities should conduct price checks on eateries as well and take those traders to court. I had a few times been cheated with traders just issuing a handwritten receipt with GST. Their attitude is really broad daylight robbery, GST collected just go to their pockets. We Malaysians can boycott those hawkers for cheating the public, but the awareness is low. Only exercising our rights will bring results.
Chris Ng Chong Phee
