KUALA LUMPUR: The Consumer Day celebration this year was a scaled down affair in keeping with the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry's message to the people to be moderate in their spending and consumption in bracing for the higher cost of living.
Minister Datuk Shahrir Abdul Samad said the theme Moderation for a Better Life (Kesederhanaan Menjamin Kesejahteraan) with the tagline Practice Sustainable Consumption (Amalkan Penggunaan Lestari) was timely and he wanted Malaysians to adopt moderation in their lifestyle.
To lead the way, he chose to scale down the event including reducing the number of exhibition booths instead of having sales carnivals and exhibitions. Emphasis was given to seminar and forums participated by consumer advocates.
The launch of the two-day celebration was also kept simple with an address by the minister.
"We should be moderate not only because of higher expenses but to me it is not the appearance and style that matter but the message we want to send at the events," he said.
The message was that moderation in spending, consumption and production was based on needs and was related to sustainable consumption and production.
Shahrir said he wanted the celebration's theme maintained for the whole of his tenure, saying that the message was good enough. "We only need to change the way we celebrate the event," he said.
With that he called on consumer groups and school consumer clubs to give inputs on how they want the celebrated to be held next time.
He also presented the Sustainable Consumer Award to social and environment activist Gurmit Singh, the Sustainable NGO Award to the Consumer Association of Malaysia and Sustainable School Consumer Club Award to SMK Sultan Abdul Jalil in Johor.
By JANE RITIKOS, Saturday July 26, 2008 MYT 8:12:51 PM.BERITADARIGUNUNG: Of course, be moderate has been peoples choice. No doubt, otherwise everyone will live in deficit. Now Shahrir is becoming an old man, talking to sons and daughters and granchildren too. I dearly miss the sit-com when he poke fun at everything except ECM-Libra thing ...... But of course, politics is a career, therefore one must toe the line. Now it is too late to pick "kunci" or "kepala lembu" for a little by election in Johor Baru. Yea, everyone is getting older but not necessarily wiser.
