KUALA LUMPUR, June 8 — A petition started by anti-tobacco group MyWatch against public spending cuts in health care and education has received more than 37,000 signatures.
The petition on Change.org, with 37,460 verified signatures at the time of writing, urged the government to protect health care and education as national priorities and to end broad-based blanket fuel subsidies.
“At a time when hospitals are overcrowded, clinics are stretched, medicines are costly, and schools face resource constraints, cutting health and education is not reform — it is retreat,” said MyWatch’s petition announced by the group’s president, Roslizawati Ali, at a press conference here today.
According to the full memorandum of protest, MyWatch said spending cuts in public health care and education would not be paid for by the Ministry of Health (MOH) or Ministry of Education (MOE), but by ordinary Malaysians.
The group cited women, mothers, older persons, low-income households, and children, among others.
“This is not fiscal discipline. This is cost-shifting from the state onto households. And that is neither just, efficient, nor morally defensible.”
MyWatch described the continued persistence of broad-based blanket fuel subsidies as “economically irrational spending”, pointing out that such subsidies disproportionately benefited high-income households, heavy users, large vehicle owners, and those least in need of subsidy protection.
“They are expensive, blunt, and deeply inefficient. The government already possesses the tools to do better. Use targeted subsidy reform properly. Use PADU properly. Protect the B40 and lower M40 directly. Stop subsidising inefficiency at scale,” said MyWatch’s petition.
“It is indefensible to preserve broad fuel subsidies for the comfortable while proposing cuts to public health and education for the vulnerable. That is not pro-rakyat policy. That is upside-down governance.”
The group further told the Madani government to abolish multiple pensions for politicians; remove excessive allowances and ceremonial perks from lawmakers and elite civil servants; and cut non-essential government-linked patronage positions; besides “ending the culture of elite insulation from national sacrifice”.
“No elected official should draw multiple publicly funded pensions while ordinary Malaysians are told to accept cuts to medicines, schools, and basic services.”
MyWatch also demanded higher tobacco/vape, alcohol, and sugar-sweetened beverage taxes, besides taxation on ultra-processed foods, high-pollution industries, and environmentally harmful emitters.
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who is also the finance minister, announced yesterday that the government would continue to cover the soaring cost of fuel subsidies, amid the United States-Israeli war with Iran, by implementing austerity measures and stopping the leakage of national funds.
Besides cuts to current-year spending, Anwar recently indicated that ministries, including MOE and the Higher Education Ministry, may also face reduced allocations in the upcoming Budget 2027, saying it was impossible that nothing could be saved “out of RM20 billion”.
He added that all ministries were equally important, citing national unity, culture and sports, and science and technology.
Fresh fighting broke out early today on the 100th day of the Persian Gulf conflict when Iran and Israel exchanged strikes, in the first of such hostilities since a ceasefire paused the war in April.
Health Minister Dzulkefly Ahmad said last month that “essential core services”, such as basic health services and drug and medical device supplies, would be protected from spending cuts, even though the MOH faces a whopping cut of up to RM4.65 billion, or 10 per cent, of its 2026 budget.
