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A Sabah MP today raised serious queries on
the funds promised to his home state under the RM105 billion Sabah
Development Corridor (SDC)
launched
in January.
In a supplementary question directed at
Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Amirsham Abdul Aziz on East
Coast Economic Corridor (ECER) in Parliament, Abdul Ghafur Salleh (BN-Kalabakan)
claimed that the RM5 billion additionally allocated for the SDC under the
Ninth Malaysian Plan has gone amiss.
 "There
was not even a single grain of sand sent to us, was it just sweet-talk by
the government to win the general election? The RM5 billion, will it be
given, or will it not be given to us?
"Di mana keadilan? (Where is
justice?)," the Sabah MP further questioned, drawing cheers from the
opposition bench especially PKR.
"Well I am not talking about the (PKR) party, I am talking about the real
justice here," said Abdul Ghafur, who managed to throw a smile to his
arch-rivals.
"Sabah does not need any sweet-talk. If there is (allocation), give it, if
there's not, let us know. Even in the Budget 2009 (tabled last August) the
allocations were
not mentioned," he asserted.
Bombarded by these questions, the senator refused to answer them on
grounds that they were discussing a different matter.
'You don't deserve to sit in the House'
However, the outspoken Kalabakan MP
refused to back down, saying that Amirsham should be prepared for any
questions.
"This is not fair. He should always be ready with any question (thrown at
him). If this is what it looks like, he does not deserve to sit in the
House as a minister," said Abdul Ghafur.
The matter finally died down when Deputy Speaker Ronald Kiandee intervened
and requested for the next MP to submit his questions.
The Sabah Development Corridor (SDC) was launched by Prime Minister
Abdullah Ahmad Badawi last January, promising a total of RM105 billion in
investments, 900,000 jobs, a waterfront city, tourism projects and a new
RM600 million new Sabah Railway terminal over the next 18 years.
The government had since planned to allocated an extra RM5 billion under
the Ninth Malaysian Plan (9MP) to improve infrastructure and to reduce the
cost of doing business in the state and also to beef-up projects
implementation.
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