Andika Nurul Iman

The Perwaja Steel Scandal Estimated losses: more that RM10 billion You may have seen online somewhere the long list of scandals in Malaysia that has resulted in the country losing billions and billions of ringgit. Time Magazine quoted an economist at Morgan Stanley in Singapore as saying that the country might have lost as much as US$100 billion since the early 1980s to corruption. One of these scandals is the Perwaja Steel project which is usually associated with a loss of RM2.56 billion. But it seems like RM10 billion is a more likely figure. In fact, Mahathir himself had admitted publicly in 2002 that Perwaja lost RM10 billion in a dialogue with Malaysians in London where he also admitted that there were possible misappropriation of funds and mismanagement in Perwaja. Perwaja Steel started in 1982 as a joint venture between the government-owned Heavy Industries Corporation and the Japanese company Nippon Steel Corporation. This was supposed to be a showcase project in Ma...

Travel is the movement of people between relatively distant geographical locations, and can involve travel by foot, bicycle, automobile, train, boat, airplane, or other means, with or without luggage, and can be one way or round trip. Travel can also include relatively short stays between successive movements. The origin of the word “travel” is most likely lost to history. The term “travel” may originate from the Old French word travail. According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, the first know use of the word travel was in the 14th century. It also states that the word comes from Middle English traveilen, travelen (which means to torment, labor, strive, journey) and earlier from Old French travailler (which means to work strenuously, toil). In English we still accasionally use the words travail and travails, which mean struggle.   According to Simon Winchester in his book ‘The Best Travelers’ Tales (2004), the words travel and travail both share an even more an...