RM1 Coin confusing

When BNM came out with this statement that the RM1 coin will cease to be legal tender effective from 7 December 2005, it has created lots of confusion to the public.

Bank Negara Malaysia announces today that effective 7 December 2005, the RM1 coin will cease to be legal tender and will be withdrawn from circulation.

The RM1 banknote will continue to be legal tender and will remain in circulation.

Members of the public will be given a three-month period from 7 September to 6 December 2005 to exchange the RM1 coins at face value without any charges at all branches of commercial banks, the main branches of Bank Simpanan Nasional and Bank Negara Malaysia's branches at Kuala Lumpur, Pulau Pinang, Johor Bahru, Kuala Terengganu, Kuching and Kota Kinabalu.

As expected, the traders and these people will be most affected by the decision.

Company badly hit by withdrawal of RM1 coin

Our company supplies and operates coin-operated self-service vending machines throughout the country. These machines use the RM1 coin. So you can imagine how shocked and upset we were on hearing the news of the withdrawal of the coin.

Bank Negara’s decision will badly affect operators of vending machines like us.

We cannot believe that when other countries have recently released new coins, we choose to remove our most widely used RM1 coin.

The withdrawal of the coin is going to cost my company and its customers more than RM200,000 to source and fit new coin acceptors to our machines.

Who is going to compensate us? Will a new coin be released soon?

Imagine that you can no longer use RM1 coin to get your trolleys at Giant or Carrefour, or you can not use the RM1 coin at some amusement parks. I know for sure that my kids may not able to ride the merry go round horses at level 5 of SOGO after the deadline unless they manage to re-configure the machines.

Question is, why is all the sudden?. One of this day I'm gonna catch up with Mr. Londe who's working with BNM to get the real story behind all this mess.

The worst part was that the BNM's press statement came only after one particular Chinese daily had broken the news.