Friday, February 5, 2010

SAND FOR SINGAPORE

7btc
As posted by Dr. Mahathir Mohamad at Che Det on January 18, 2010 4:16 PM

1. Works Minister Datuk Shaziman Abu Mansor remarked that everyday 500 trucks carry sand from Johor to Singapore. A friend told me that it is not 500. It is 700. That's a lot of sand.

2. I thought we had stopped selling lorry loads of our land to Singapore. But my friend explained that the sand is not sand. It is silica sand.

3. Singapore needs it to make microchips. I don't know how much sand goes into those tiny microchips. Must be a lot if they need 700 truck loads of sand a day.

4. Selling raw materials gives the least return. Better to add value by processing the raw material.

5. Cannot be that difficult to produce silica from silica sand. Glass factories do that (I think) all the time. And we do have glass factories in Malaysia. Why not produce the silicon wafers and sell them to Singapore?

6. I think someone is not telling the truth.