Jamal Ali

Based on the consumer price index (CPI) issued by the Department of Statistics, prices of goods and services have generally increased by 29 percent in general over a period of 10 years, between 2005 and 2015. BR1M or 1Malaysia People’s Aid program is devised by the Malaysian Government as the effort to ease the burden of lower income group in Malaysia. The program is devised to help the lower income group cushion the high cost of living in Malaysia. Hence this research study the implementation of BR1M by conducting an exploratory case study in a rural district in Kedah to gain input on the level of satisfaction and the self-sufficiency of the of BR1M recipient. Findings show that BR1M needs continuous improvement and revisiting the plan.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors believed to influence the behavior of 1,042 rice farmers in Malaysia regarding the overuse of pesticides. Frequent overuse of pesticide will have an impact on human health and the environment, which lead to greater expenditure on health care. Design/methodology/approach: The theoretical models of compliance behavior tested include the basic deterrence model, which focuses on the enforcement of regulation as a key determinant of compliance. The models integrate economic theory with theories of social behavior to account for motivations expected, influencing individuals’ decisions on whether to follow the regulation on using pesticides. Findings: Significance tests reported that the information regarding the danger of using pesticides, the perception toward the impact on the environment and the expected impact on health influences the compliance behavior of using pesticides. Research limitations/implications: These findings highlight the necessity for the policy makers to design an effective program which gives more information and provide training related to the risk and the safe handling of pesticides. Practical implications: The farmers who receive information and training related to handling of pesticides become more cautious in the use of pesticides. Countries involved in agriculture and the use of pesticides widely by their farmers need to emphasize continuous training and periodic information dissemination. Social implications: The implication drawn is rice farmers should be encouraged to practice new methods in rice planting, especially in the integrated pest management method. Originality/value: These research findings suggest that the overuse of pesticides in the rice farming continues to be an important problem.

A database of 35 case histories of anchored pile walls, collected mainly from Chicago, Boston, Texas and Washington, DC, USA as well as Taiwan, has been evaluated to predict the performance of deep excavations in clays. Various factors (including excavation depth, undrained shear strength, wall bending stiffness, factor of safety and pile embedment) affecting the deformation characteristics of excavations supported by anchored pile walls are presented and compared with findings of previous researchers. The normalised maximum wall displacement δHmax/He falls in the range of 0·1–0·7% and the location of δHmax is at a depth of 0·4He to 1·0He. Normalised maximum ground surface settlement δVmax/He is in a range of 0·1–0·4%. The ratio of maximum surface settlement to maximum lateral displacement falls in the range of 0·7–1·4, with an average value of 1·0. Maximum wall displacements are dependent on undrained shear strength and factor of safety and decrease with an increase in these factors. Maximum wall displacements decrease by increasing wall stiffness and most of the cases are bounded by values of EI/He between 35 MNm and 120 MNm. The effect of system stiffness is more pronounced in soft clays whereas deformations in stiff clays are less dependent on system stiffness.

In a bid to improve efficiency in health care, the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Malaysia has been implementing various health sector reforms such as expansion and upgrading of public health facilities. Even though efficiency study is vital for health care institution in monitoring performance, to date no study has been undertaken to measure technical and scale efficiencies of public hospitals in Kedah specifically. The objectives of this study are to measure technical and scale efficiencies among district public hospitals in the state of Kedah, Malaysia. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) technique was used in estimating the efficiency score of these hospitals. Data were obtained from nine public hospitals in Kedah for three years from 2008 to 2010. The DEA technique was used on pooled data which consists of 27 decision-making units (DMUs). The input data comprised the number of doctors, nurses and beds while the number of outpatients, inpatients, surgeries and deliveries performed represented the outputs. Of 27 DMUs, 74 per cent were technically efficient which lied on the best-practice frontier. The technical efficiency (TE) score of technical-inefficient hospitals ranged between 0.780 and 0.991 with the average of 0.935 while the score of scale-inefficient hospitals was between 0.832 and 0.992. The average score of 16 scale-inefficient DMUs was 0.938 which implies that, on average, these DMUs were able to reduce 6.25 per cent of their resources while maintaining the same number of output.

Compensation to indigenous communities forced to relocate as a result of a development project is examined in this study. A survey of 379 families displaced by the construction of the Bakun Dam in Sarawak, Malaysia, reveals a high level of dissatisfaction with the compensation provided. The compensation given by the government to the relocated indigenous communities was lower than they had expected. The average compensation gap (the difference between the expected compensation and the actual compensation received for land) is 20 acres per study household. This has resulted in dissatisfaction among the indigenous communities. Greater participation of indigenous communities in the compensation process is needed to reduce the compensation gap. Indigenous communities' rights and freedom to participate in the compensation process is important and should be an integral part of compensation policy for large development projects.

Purpose – This study examined the effectiveness of Finishing School programmes in enhancing the employability of graduates from institutions of higher learning. The perceptions of the graduates and employers towards the effectiveness of the programmes were analyzed. The effectiveness of Finishing School programmes evaluated through a graduate marketability outcome study and the expectations of employers with regard to the type of soft skills of graduates most needed by industries were also examined. Methodology – Data for this study were obtained through a survey questionnaire administered to graduates and focus group interviews with selected employers. The primary data involved a large sample (n = 1092) of graduates from public universities and also 31 selected employers from various industries. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics, Chi-square tests, and a multinomial logit model. Due to the unavailability of a population frame, the data were collected using a convenient sampling design. Findings – Graduates had a positive perception of the effectiveness of Finishing School programmes. However, in terms of the marketability outcome, Finishing school programmes currently

The paddy sector is a strategic sector in Malaysia. This is due to its importance in the context of rice self-sufficiency, income generation and job opportunities especially for the rural population. The Malaysian government has set the goal of achieving self- sufficiency level in rice production at about 65-70% of local consumption. In order to achieve the objective, the government has implemented many strategies, the group farming project in Muda Agricultural Development Area (MADA) is one such strategy. The study was conducted on four MADA areas representing three schemes, namely the 10 tones Project, Estate Paddy Project, and Model Farm Project. The proportionate multistage stratified random sampling technique involving the area sampling method and the systematic method was employed to select 664 respondents. An econometric model and other statistical techniques were used to estimate the effects of group farming project on productivity and farmers’ income. The study shows that, in terms of economic return dimension, Model Farm Project is more successful in increasing the paddy production. The study makes a number of suggestions for improving the effectiveness of group farming projects. Recommendations are included in the project planning and implementation of group farming, and the importance of subsidy on paddy production for farmers in the study area.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors believed to affect compliance behavior with regard to the zoning regulation of 284 Peninsular Malaysian fishermen. Frequent violation of regulations will have an impact on the demand for protection, and therefore lead to greater expenditure on law enforcement. The theoretical models of compliance behavior tested include the basic deterrent model, which focuses on the certainty and severity of penalty as a key determinant of compliance, and models which integrate economic theory with theories of social psychology to account for legitimacy, deterrence and other motivations expected to influence an individuals’ decisions on whether to comply. Policy makers who want to improve compliance face two choices: the first choice is whether to focus only on building staff capacity to detect and correct non-compliance; and the second choice is a combination of the strategies in building staff capacity and at the same time building commitment among fishermen so that they will comply with the regulations. The results of the empirical analysis provide evidence of the relationship between co-management strategies on the one hand, and types of fishermen on the other. These findings imply that co-management activities should be strengthened to complement the deterrent strategies in the management of fishery resources in Peninsular Malaysia.

The objective of this study is to re-examine the demand for money in ASEAN-5 countries, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to cointegration analysis. The empirical results show that there is a unique cointegrated and stable long-run relationship among broad monetary aggregate, income, interest rate, exchange rate, foreign interest rate, and inflation. We found that the income elasticity and the exchange rate coefficient are positive while the inflation elasticity is negative. This indicates that depreciation of domestic currency increases the demand for money, supporting the wealth effect argument and people prefer to substitute physical assets for money balances that support our theoretical expectation.