Malaysians, opposition parties offering free rides to voters, Latest World News - The New Paper
World

Malaysians, opposition parties offering free rides to voters

This article is more than 12 months old

Malaysians take to Facebook, Twitter for ways to return to hometowns to vote in May 9 election

JOHOR BARU: Both voters and opposition parties are providing transport for Malaysians returning to their hometowns to vote.

And a crowdfunding initiative set up by Malaysians on Twitter has collected more than RM140,000 (S$47,000) in just over a week to help fund trips, reported the Malay Mail.

Several groups called Jom Balik Undi (Come, Let's Return to Vote) have also formed on Facebook.

One group has over 43,000 members offering help with carpooling on polling day, The Star reported.

"The purpose of this page is just to carpool and to assist people in carrying out their duty as a voter... We do not represent any political party... any posts in support of any party will be deleted," said a message by the admin of the Facebook group.

The postings, in Chinese, English and Malay, either asked for or offered carpool services, or put people in touch with someone who could help them.

Some members on the page also set specific times and places for passengers to meet before heading to their destination, The Star reported.

Others asked would-be passengers to help share the costs of highway tolls and petrol, while some did it simply for the companyduring the journey back to their hometowns.

The #UndiRabu crowdfunding initiative set up by Malaysians on Twitter to help fellow Malaysians go home to vote has collected more than RM140,000 in just a week.

The group started the campaign on April 11.

Hundreds of Malaysians have also offered to carpool with voters returning to their hometowns with the Twitter hashtag #CarPoolGE14.

RETWEETS

On April 10, a Twitter user, @Plastic_Moonzea, asked if anyone was carpooling from Singapore to the Taiping/Penang area because she couldn't afford to take three days leave and offered to help drive the car.

She didn't have to wait long.

Soon after her first tweet, she posted: "Hi guys! Thank you so much for the retweets! I found my carpool partners! Appreciate your help so so much! #PulangMengundi. Let's do this."

Opposition parties in Johor are also offering free bus rides and carpool services to get voters to return to cast their votes.

Johor DAP has sourced 10 buses, funded by the public, to bring back Malaysians working in Singapore.

This came about after news emerged that bus tickets from Singapore to Malaysia were sold out, said state DAP campaign manager George Poh.

He added that the trips were one-way as the organisers were unclear when voters would want to return to Singapore.

PAS (Parti Islam SeMalaysia) also announced they would be providing free carpool services, The Star reported.

WORLD