Thursday, May 22, 2008

Impacts 3. Struggling to make ends meet(1/2)


This happened a few months back. I was meaning to write abt it in the blog but forgot completely. Jes remembered that I didn’t write it afterall. My friends and I were having one of those long discussions we used to have every now and then on the terrace about worldly matters. Lol.

I used to work in a construction company and was incharge of handling the quotation part. A client would come with the drawings of his house and I made a rough estimate of how much we were gonna charge for each floor for the foundation and the finishing based on factors referring to the drawings. And if u were to build lets say a house consisting of 8floors of an AVERAGE sized house, it would come up to a certain figure(don’t forget this point). So we took into estimation that an average individual gets lets say Rf6000 per month. But to make this interesting lets say that he actually SAVES Rf5000 each month after paying phone bills, net, food, electric, tuitions on kids, books, clothing, kasauti package, etc etc.

We found out that it would take him exactly 40YEARS to come up with Rf2,400,000 to complete the construction for his house………for ONLY the foundation. Meaning for the whole project it would take him around 80Years to collect that amount of money. Then lets look around Male’. How many houses do you see under construction to be made into 8floors and some even more? So the question now arises how do they do it? Where does all the money come from. And this is a community where hundreds and thousands of ppl are struggling to make ends meet.

Im not implying that all the owners of those houses are thieves etc etc. We DO have the option of doing it the Maldivian way of sharing the expense amongst the family members and uncles and aunts. And most ppl prefer taking loans to help them with the funds needed. But what about an average person who is making an HONEST living refusing to fall victim to fraud, theft, bribery and whose parents dont have the means of capital to start his own business or a family business?

So whats the whole point of this post? Quite frankly I didn’t think up of a point around which to build up this post on. But then again it might be that Maldivians are payed that little. We should not be struggling to make ends meet. There should be a minimum wage that would ensure each individual to live peacefully without having to take 2 or 3 jobs at once and cramping up the whole family into tiny suffocating rooms. A way for the youth to survive without being dependant on their parents. A survey needs to be carried out throughout Male’ and the islands distributing them into different regions to find how much an individual would require to make ends meet. Then a minimum wage should be allocated by the government or any other means they choose to do it to implement that. So that Maldivians can actually SAVE from their salaries without having to bleed for it.

We see tourists coming into our country all the time. Most of them aren’t big businessmen or merchants. Most of them are people who live normal average lives back at their countries. But still they manage to save more than enough to travel thousands of miles to resorts with their families for vacations. Us Average Maldivians on the other hand have some choices too. “where shall we go for our holidays honey? Ive taken some time off from the office”. “Oh! I know. Lets go to Villingili, or we can go to kuda bandos. Theres even hulhumale’ now. And if it’s a long holiday we can always go to an island of a relative same as we did last year and the year before that. Yayyyy!!!”.

12 comments:

iecco said...

this is something my dad used to talk about...
yeah where does all the money come from?!

Subtle Hues said...

This is smthn which crosses my mind when i see all those private cars and huge buildings. And the Maldivian idea of vacation is pathetic, but true. *sigh*

shan said...

easier said than done...

Anonymous said...

the problem is not the minimum wage or the small space....but where the allocated work and pay is......this wudnt hav happened if everythin was evenly distributed and good work was available through out maldives rather than male'.......everyone is concentrated on devolopin a small space rather than the whole country....hulhumale' is great idea to releive the space problem in male'....but this wudnt hav been the problem if 20 or so years ago they come up with a plan to distribute the country devolopment....rather than putting it in their pockets....we need new leaders who can devolop this whole country not the hell hole we now know as male'

aesha said...

good point noted!

moyameehaa said...

man..ur posts are becoming more and more interesting. hehehehe

very very very true. this is what we see all around us. corruption, illegal businesses and fraud are how some of these people get rich. i dont want to, but i have to blame this one on selfish politicians (yes golha included) and unethical egocentric maldivian businessmen. our problem is not entirely a problem of not getting enough money to the country...it is about equal distribution of it.

for example..recently the governer mr.jihad have said dat resort owners dont keep their money in maldives. one good example is universal. the koli clan. they take it all to srilanka and singapore. they have so many srilankan staff. then there are the resorts leased for loooong times. the guys pay the same amount of money they have been paying since they began.bed taxes are the only real thing they pay now i guess.even that is not gud enuf ...experts say. the giant businessmen aint taxed.and put that aside and see how they treat the staff in resorts. some resorts have 10 people in one room with one toilet...and if it is bangaalhees that could go up to 20 maybe. and in this one resort the receptionists get (feshey musaara) below 3000. even the tips are ripped off. that resort have an italian management. see how these people are using cheap labor and resources of our country and live their like ...who knws. the government have to look in these and make sure these things dont happen.

another important thing is having 4 mega cities like dr.hassan is proposing. otherwise maldives cannot go far. but this is a problem coz many people dnt want to move. we have to educate these dumb maldivians first. educate does not mean teaching them maths and science.

ok this is long enuf.bye for now. keep em comin!

moyameehaa said...

man..ur posts are becoming more and more interesting. hehehehe

very very very true. this is what we see all around us. corruption, illegal businesses and fraud are how some of these people get rich. i dont want to, but i have to blame this one on selfish politicians (yes golha included) and unethical egocentric maldivian businessmen. our problem is not entirely a problem of not getting enough money to the country...it is about equal distribution of it.

for example..recently the governer mr.jihad have said dat resort owners dont keep their money in maldives. one good example is universal. the koli clan. they take it all to srilanka and singapore. they have so many srilankan staff. then there are the resorts leased for loooong times. the guys pay the same amount of money they have been paying since they began.bed taxes are the only real thing they pay now i guess.even that is not gud enuf ...experts say. the giant businessmen aint taxed.and put that aside and see how they treat the staff in resorts. some resorts have 10 people in one room with one toilet...and if it is bangaalhees that could go up to 20 maybe. and in this one resort the receptionists get (feshey musaara) below 3000. even the tips are ripped off. that resort have an italian management. see how these people are using cheap labor and resources of our country and live their like ...who knws. the government have to look in these and make sure these things dont happen.

another important thing is having 4 mega cities like dr.hassan is proposing. otherwise maldives cannot go far. but this is a problem coz many people dnt want to move. we have to educate these dumb maldivians first. educate does not mean teaching them maths and science.

ok this is long enuf.bye for now. keep em comin!

kaiza shozey said...

@shan: actually they are trying to implement is. some guy claims he'd do it if elected.....or so i heard. but seems so far its jes talk. lets see how it unfolds.

@blink: interesting point of view. but nothing we can do abt those mistakes that were made in the past dho? but i think Moya meeha has shed some light on what u were referring to

@Moya meeha: thank u. yea, golhaa is the main target that can be blamed for all this but didnt wanna get into that cos thats a VAST area that needs to be covered once that door has been opened. hehe

and yea, ive heard of Dr.hassan's proposal. it seemed promising. lets see vat happens.

Anonymous said...

from what i know about the high raised building it seems that a businessmen would agree to do the whole foundation for a house if the person would give the businessmen 2 to 3 floors from the house for a specified number of years.these businessmen most of the time are resort owners, ministers and such.it seems that for the businessmen the guy could regain the cost of making the whole foundation of the house within 6 to 8 years.and mostly the owners gives the floors for 12 to 16 year.So for the business guys they would be earning a profit for half of that period so they would be more than happy to invest in more houses.this is how so many high rise buildings are there.and if you were to look into this closer you can see that most of the houses the foundation work is funded by same people.and for the owners they could take out loans to complete the floors.after that they could rent it out.normal rent for a apartment in maldives is now 10 to 12 thousand so they can easily repay back the loan.This is why you see the foundation work finishing so soon but the floors are completed really slow yet the first 2 to 3 floors would be completed in a rush.

kaiza shozey said...

@magoodhu jinni: impressive. ur absolutely right. that IS how construstion companies do it and there are cases where the expense is covered by another party who in turn gets 3 floors or more for a specified number of years. Though in my expeience that has happened around one in every five cases. for the rest its jes on theeir own. and the rent dho...u knw, rent in male; is almost twice more than the rent even here in australia. i guess it all depends on the demand.

Anonymous said...

I used to be a honest man. 2 jobs, study and working - I went mental with the workload.

Pushed out of the game, I've started dealing drugs, and working contract beatings, selling weapons and stealing stuff.

I'm rich now.

kaiza shozey said...

@anonymous: dont u think u went a bit too dramatic when u described vat u do now? :p
anyways, ur choice dude. atleast it worked out well so far.