You can't blame the people, with the thought of the price of petrol going up further, everyone will slit each others' throats just to get the cheaper price.
Blame the traffic police, the radio stations and gas station owners. The SMSes started around noon and saw people lining up at the stations since 2pm, giving the authorities especially the police more than ample time to inform the motorists that those were just rumours. Instead the traffic congestion build up and hit maximum when people got off from work at 5pm.
So traffic jams were everywhere in KK that lasted only until 8pm.
What the authorities should've done.
- Traffic police should have been stationed on every gas stations and control the traffic flow, while also disseminate the fact that the rumours were untrue. So motorists who still have fuel can turn back and go home. Did anyone see any traffic police yesterday? I for one, didn't see any on my journey, even the newspapers pictures didn't show any presence of the traffic personnel.
- Radio stations should have broadcast this every 5 minutes, I know the local KK-based did but how many were listening to the Bajau broadcast? The announcement should've been broadcasted by all the major radio stations in the country, Hitz.fm, ERA, LightFM, MyFM and the rest. I think this is a failure to counter such a rumour.
- Gas station owner should not take advantage of the situation, they should ask their staff to put up manilacard to inform people that those were just rumours and they are not closing for 3 days!
Of course I still blame the people who queue up eventhough they still have petrol in their tanks. Oii - if the SMS says the station will close at 4pm and you are queueing at 6pm, do you still think the SMS is true?
Imagine if there were more serious rumour? Palis-palis but what if there were rumours saying a group of Race-A are beating up Race-B people for no reason at all. They all just wait to collect the bodies?
