Press Statement By Michael Kong:
Based on the recent BKSS 6.0’s allocation for food aid, the value of each individual food aid pack should be approximately RM 70.00. However, many recipients of these food packs have voiced out that they have only received food aid packs worth approximately RM50.00. With that, I believe many of these recipients would like to know where the remaining RM20.00 has gone to.
As a member of GPS, SUPP owes it the people to provide an answer to this pertinent question. This is especially so when SUPP is the party that is put in charge of the distribution of the food aid packs within Kuching. Due to this and since accountability is one of the basic fundamentals in any democratic society, YB Violet Yong had previously raised questions on the food packs and directed them to SUPP. With that, SUPP should give a reasonable answer to this question. I believe that since SUPP has been in the Sarawak government for nearly 60 years, it should know its responsibilities as the government of the day.
However, Kho Teck Wan recently posted on her personal Facebook page where she wrote:
“… I can only say my team doesn’t even know how the BKSS food taste or smell like. We sent to people whatever provided to us by the Resident Office. We use our own car to transport the food aids, we bought coffee for ourselves and our volunteers. Trust me, the morning coffee tastes so much better when u paid it with your own money, especially after a round of hard work.
My sincere apology if your food basket has less item than what you expected. If we left anything out, it wasn’t on purpose. Please give us a call…”
This is a post that shows her sympathy and gratitude towards the party’s members. However, this did not answer the question “Why did the RM70.00 food aid pack end up being only worth RM50.00?”. This is an attempt to divert attention away from the big elephant in the room!
In fact, DAP has never targeted the members of SUPP for their work because they are only performing their tasks for the benefit of the people. Instead, the question is aimed towards the leaders of SUPP and GPS because as the State Government, the party responsible for the making of the policy should instead deal with these issues head-on instead of pushing the buck to the party members.
With Kho Teck Wan’s type of answer towards the queries raised by DAP, the party members of SUPP will become a convenient shield for the leaders of SUPP whenever faced with any queries and/or allegations. Rather than hiding behind their grassroots, the leaders of SUPP should step up and answer this simple question instead of continuing with the party’s “dodge, hide, and lie” ethics.
In fact, when Kho Teck Wan was trying to seek empathy for SUPP’s members, she should take the time to think about why the State Government did not allocate any resources to all ADUNS in each constituency equally, but instead continued to allocate RM5,000,000.00 of yearly allocation and the RM250,000.00 for BKSS 6.0 food aid ringgits only to GPS elected representatives.
When Kho Teck Wan was pointing out that the SUPP volunteers had to pay for their own petrol and coffee, we would like to gently remind her that the members of DAP have also been serving the people in this manner since the formation of the party. This is not a reasonable answer to the question is “Why did the RM70.00 food aid pack ended up being only worth RM50.00?” Therefore, I hope that the leaders of SUPP can stop using the party’s members to shy away from their responsibilities and just answer this simple question; one that seeks transparency from the government for the well-being of the people.
Michael Kong Feng Nian
Special Assistant to YB Chong Chieng Jen
