Filling up the gas tank using MyKad?

When visiting gas stations to fill up the tank, make sure you have your MyKad with you come May 2010.

Without MyKad, your cash or credit card will not get you even a single drop of petrol!

I have no idea whether we will also need to swipe our MyKad to buy sugar, cooking oil and the like in the future.

The Malaysian government may be the only one in this world that needs to verify a buyer's identity before he fills up his petrol tank.

This reminds me of communism, where the people needed to show their identifications when buying a loaf of bread.

But then that was an era long gone.

At a time when ASEAN states and China are opening up their markets towards one another, I have no idea the policy of selling petrol on identification is meant to show off MyKad's multiple functions, which even many developed countries pale in comparison, or to stop foreigners from buying cheap petrol here.

If we are doing it just to show off the multiple functions of MyKad, then we should rightly feel proud, as a pocket-size MyKad can accommodate at least eight different functions.

Any data, from personal particulars to whether the cardholder is suffering from VD as well as his wealth and other private details, will be unreservedly exposed with a MyKad reader.

This is of secondary importance, and the worst thing is that there is no product assurance on the extremely vulnerable MyKad chips.

Imagine you are in a hurry for work, school, or some business meeting, but having an empty tank in front of a gas station MyKad reader that refuses to accept your identification.

JPN urges the public to replace their chips if found damaged, showing that such a possibility is very real.

Imagine half the country's population rushing to JPN to replace their MyKad just to fill up their petrol tanks, and the additional burden on JPN's side.

If the new policy has been a counter-measure against foreign car owners who have poked the loopholes in the earlier policy of allowing foreign-registered vehicles to fill up their petrol tanks only within 50km from national borders, and up to 20 litres before leaving the country, then it is by all measures a very poor contrivance.

Foreign vehicles, especially those from Singapore, have brought much bigger economic benefits to this country than the profits they have sneaked away from our petrol allowances.

Inconveniences experienced at petrol pumps will only drive them away.

If we do this merely to stamp cross-border smuggling activities, then the anti-smuggling squads should work a lot harder to check their activities instead of transferring the hassles to motorists across the nation.

It is necessary for us to prevent foreigners from enjoying our petrol allowances, but not to spend huge sums of money acquiring MyKad readers and inconvenience motorists! 

Acknowledgment: (By TAN POH KHENG/Translated by DOMINIC LOH/Sin Chew Daily)