It’s another of the many great ironies of life in Malaysia.

Stationery shops selling ink and paper for your printer are closed, the computer sales and repair shops are shuttered. But pawn shops are wide open, as the poor and suffering hand over their valuables, bringing profits to the owners.

One has to wonder where our priorities lie. At a time when children are studying online and a good 60% of the workforce operating from home, our leaders deem it fit to hinder these activities.

The children need stationery at home. Those without printers at home may need to do some printing outside.

A good 70% of workers are working from home, almost all of them using computers. What do they do if there is a breakdown? They can’t even buy a new computer in a hurry.

It’s even more ridiculous when the boxes of ink are hanging before your eyes and paper is stacked up chest high in supermarkets, but surrounded by tape, making it a no-go zone. Supermarkets can stock stationery but cannot sell them. There’s irony for you.

Supermarkets are spacious. Why do authorities force them to reduce their floor space by cordoning off large areas, thus cramming the crowd into a smaller space. Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of the lockdown?

Deputy domestic trade and consumer affairs minister Rosol Wahid has brought this matter up, about 10 days ago. It looks like his pleas to the National Security Council (MKN) have fallen on deaf ears.

But you have to give our leaders one thing – they can see that people have no money. And their answer seems to be: “Go pawn the stuff you have – or just borrow”.

Moneylenders are allowed to operate, too. I am not kidding.

In fact, minister Zuraida Kamaruddin has suggested that people should borrow from these community credit firms, a euphemism for licensed money lenders, instead of Ah Longs who charge exorbitant rates. Apparently, licensed moneylenders are okay. Debt’s a bad idea, madam!

I think it’s the government that should be helping these people. Maybe the government can start its own micro-credit system, along the lines of Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank, with interest-free loans. How about that, madam minister?

You could bring your officers to mosques, or local council offices, where people can apply for small loans – say RM300 to RM500 – to tide them over each month or to set up their nasi lemak stalls.

The officers could transfer the cash right there and then and the borrowers can repay in instalments when we get to Phase 4 of the national recovery plan.

That can’t be too difficult – after all, the government has many ways of ensuring that people pay up when the time comes to do so.

The Pemulih plan may help, but it’s going to take time. Most of the handouts are coming between August and December. But things are bad now, right now.

People are jumping off buildings, off bridges, even hanging themselves from the pedestrian bridges. In the first three months of this year alone, 336 suicides have been reported. That’s four a day!

The time to act is now. This is not a “as soon as possible” scenario, it’s more do-or-die.

It’s not a time to ask people to go deeper into debt, or to polish off all their savings, which is what is likely to happen to a lot of people with the EPF withdrawals, or i-Citra as it is being called now.

Already, it has been made clear that close to four million EPF contributors will not be able to touch their money as they have less than RM5,000 in savings. Here is the irony – it is these people who need the money the most.

And you know what, a few million more are going to have less than RM5,000 in EPF savings once this round of i-Citra withdrawals is done.

There has been some awakening to the hardships of the people, though. Take the scrapping of the ridiculous 8-to-8 rule for restaurants and food stalls, for one.

The 8-to-8 rule was a lose-lose move from the start. In the morning, the food sellers had depended on the “going to work” crowd, or what little was left of it. Near markets – which are allowed to open at 6am – they depended on the market-goers.

These people would stop to eat, or pack their food, before going to work or going home from the market.

But with food shops opening at 8am, it was too late in the day for the buyers, who were either off to work or had gone home from the market.

With the 6am-to-10pm rule, I guess both the workers and food sellers will have reason to smile, but I do hope they will start thinking about setting up those stalls further apart.

Whole roads have been taken over with canopies, especially in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor, where they have been given the green light to trade. SOP compliance is very low with customers brushing shoulders as they buy from adjoining shops and haggle with masks down as they get their food.

If only they can get the roadside stalls to be separated by distances of, say, more than five metres, there would be enough elbow room to shop safely.

And to breathe a lot easier, in more ways than one.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.