As I see itPolitical squabbling prolongs air ticket price pain for Malaysian Borneo students coming home for Eid

Bickering between Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s allies about expensive airfares has done little to help Sabah and Sarawak’s undergraduates who have long faced peak season price gouging

While the government has offered subsidies to ease the situation, the stopgap measure is unsustainable as the country embarks on spending cuts to manage its mounting debt

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A vendor prepares food at a bazaar for Muslims to break their fast during the holy month of Ramadan in Kuala Lumpur. Photo: Reuters

Published: 2:00pm, 20 Apr 2023

There has been a fair bit of mudslinging over the past week between reluctant allies in Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s government, as undergraduates from the Bornean states of Sabah and Sarawak balked at exorbitant airfares to fly home for the Eid holidays that started this week.

It was a debate that would not have been out of place in previous years, except this time it was between members of the ruling administration – Transport Minister Anthony Loke who heads the Democratic Action Party (DAP) and his predecessor, Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) president Wee Ka Siong.

Until last November, when Anwar was put in charge of a unity government formed by erstwhile political adversaries, the DAP and MCA decidedly sat on opposite ends as they tussled for support from the valuable minority ethnic Chinese vote base.

The argument that played out over the media centred on the price of a one-way ticket from the capital city of Kuala Lumpur to the easternmost district of Tawau in Sabah state. Wee said a ticket on national carrier Malaysia Airlines would cost over 3,000 ringgit (US$677), based on his checks on the superapp of rival airline AirAsia.

Loke shot back by telling Wee to shop around for best fares instead of relying on prices quoted by a competing airline, and threw in an invitation for the latter to see off a flight on that exact route which cost passengers 249 ringgit (US$56) a seat.

But in the end, the tit-for-tat between the two leaders did little to deal with the fact that flying home for the Eid holidays remains an expensive undertaking for university students from Malaysian Borneo, many of whom come from underprivileged backgrounds.