YOURSAY 'The Kedai Rakyat 1Malaysia (KR1M) is setting itself up for failure by comparing its products against branded competitors.'

Pua now targets 1M'sia baby formula milk

Jokuan: This is a serious public health issue. Excessive Vitamin A and low/missing Vitamin D, calcium, iron, zinc, etc, in baby/children milk can cause serious and permanent problems for bone development.

Low/missing essential fatty acids and Vitamin B, etc, can cause problems in brain and nerve development. Low/missing iron and folic acid can cause anemia. And the list goes on.... Producing and selling such low-quality baby/children milk is a public crime.

It can put a whole generation at serious health risk, if not kill some of them.

Shabaruddin: Kedai Rakyat 1Malaysia's (KR1M) products are sold under the KR1M house brand. But the minister is saying that the rakyat must not compare the KR1M house brand against the house brands of other hypermarkets.

So the minister is admitting that KR1M's products prices are more expensive than other hypermarkets' housebrand products. If that is the case, then what's so cheap about KR1M?

Changeagent: KR1M is setting itself up for failure by comparing its products against branded competitors.

People who purchase branded products are usually less price sensitive and can afford to pay more for better quality. On the other hand, people who are budget-conscious will continue to buy house-brands from Carrefour and other hypermarkets since they are still the cheapest in the market.

This leaves the KR1M products in the classically dreaded ‘stuck in the middle' position, where it is in a price position that doesn't appeal to anyone or worse still, it doesn't even know who its targeted buyers are.

The perceived quality issues do not help matters at all, and unless rectified quickly, will surely become the biggest cause for KR1M's downfall.

Rchard: Anybody in the shoes of Mydin Mohamed Holdings Bhd will take the offer given by the government to set up these KR1M shops. It is just an extension of what it does.

I have shopped in Mydin and its quality is comparable and prices better than the foreign hypermarkets.

Why are most of Malaysiakini commentators coming out with baseless racist statements against a company which genuinely took up the government offer to run outlets offering affordable and reasonable quality products.

If this outlet is selling sub-standard items, why has the sales increased even after MP Tony Pua's claims.

Hann Wei Toh: In my opinion, what DAP should do is to ask the relevant authorities to solve the matter, not holding press conferences every day. It wants the low-cost shop programme to be a success, does it not?

I hope it is not the other way around.

Lim Chong Leong: When KR1M was launched, it was announced that the objective of the project was to provide some relief to the poor hard hit by subsidy cuts on fuel and flour, etc.

Now it seems what the 1Malaysia shops are selling are comparable in price with those lower-end goods of hypermarkets, if not worse off in quality. The key question here is why the need for these shops and costing what is now already RM40 million in setting-up costs when the goods sold are already found in hypermarkets.

Why the need to use those funds which we all so painfully had to endure paying via subsidy cuts only to be wasted in such a venture that provides us with what is already available in the market?

Is this not like us paying for the ‘free' 1Malaysia email via government agencies using our taxes for email accounts which we can already get for free?

Bender: I totally agree with Lim Chong Leong. It seems that is the Umno-BN formula for raking in more of rakyat's money into their own pockets while pretending to do good for the public.

With substandard products being marketed as a relief for the poor, the poor don't actually gain much benefit compared to what is already out there in Tesco and Carrefour. If Tony Pua's claims (about the lack of quality) are correct, we can say that with this scheme, the poor are actually worse off.

What kind of assurance do we get from the government that consuming these products won't affect our health, particularly in the long run? The least the government can do is to conduct truly independent scientific tests for all the products and don't just blame Tony Pua for being jealous of KR1M scheme.

By the way, someone ought to teach the government basic marketing lesson: if you want to market your product properly, don't focus on how much money you have invested in building your chain of stores, focus on the quality of the products instead.

Pemerhati: By highlighting the deficiencies in the milk and other products, Tony Pua is actually doing the work on behalf of the health authorities.

The health authorities should not only check the foodstuffs for compliance with the food regulations in the KR1M shops but also in the various other retail outlets to safeguard the health of the public.

It is a fact that we have a bloated public service, which on a per capita basis, is two to three times as large as our neighbours. It looks like a lot of them are not doing their work and are earning ‘gaji buta'.

When confronted, the authorities will usually give the unbelievable excuse - we are short of staff.

MatrixLYN: Just because the rakyat is poor, it doesn't mean the government can feed their children with sub-standard milk (possibly poisonous even) when other brands like Nespray, Nestle, Dumex, etc, have the equivalent economy milk which is safe and contains the necessary nutrients, unlike some dodgy OEM (original equipment manufacturer) milk from China, which is most likely what the KR1M milk is.

As a father, I have made comparisons between various milk powders and I can fully understand what Pua is saying.

Ferdtan: Where are the consumers' associations? Calling CAP (Consumer Association of Penang) and Fomca (Federation of Malaysian Consumers Associations).

Come out and do the relevant products testing (you can provide the answers on the allegations without any political bias). Either you exonerate KR1M or prove the parliamentarians right.

In the past, CAP had taken on big commercial giants like Nestle with regard to their products, why are they so quiet now? Do they know something we don't - and are afraid to be involved?

Foodforthought: Subsidies were either reduced or withdrawn in the name of national budget cost-cutting. Now a whopping sum is given to Mydin to set up KR1M. Where is the logic in this?

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