INTHEBLACK December 2023/January 2024 Special Edition - Flipbook - Page 34
MEMBER PROFILE
LIFELONG
LEARNING
Dr Appadu Santhariah CPA’s career has taken him all over
the world. Crediting his achievements to the help he
received along the way, he believes in paying it forward.
WORDS HELEN HAWKES
G
rowing up on a coconut plantation in
Malaysia, Dr Appadu Santhariah CPA
experienced generational poverty first-hand.
His father, an indentured agricultural worker,
earned 60 Malaysian ringgit (A$20) a week. To support
his wife and a large family, he also did odd jobs, such
as selling ice cream from a bicycle.
Santhariah, together with his mother and siblings,
also contributed to the family’s survival. They opened
a stall selling tea, coffee, noodles and home-made
banana fritters.
“Most of the time the workers were too poor to
pay cash, so our sales were mostly on credit,”
he says. “I was 13, and I kept the books and did a
debt collection task to collect the money on payday.
34 INTHEBLACK Dec 2023/Jan 2024 SPECIAL EDITION
This gave me first-hand experience of how to manage
money in a business environment.”
A job as an articled clerk at a British chartered
accounting firm, from 1972 to 1977, cemented
his passion for accounting and finance and earned
his admittance to the Fellowship of Certified
Practising Accountants.
The job paid £12 (A$23) a week – much of which was
sent back to his family in Malaysia – and Santhariah
supplemented his income by working as a hostel cook.
However, the job also provided him with a learning
foundation, and an introduction to tax. He built up
his tax expertise, particularly in value-added tax (VAT)
and goods and services tax (GST), as it is referred to in
countries such as Australia and Malaysia.
