Statement by Chong Chieng Jen:
I have today met up with the Deputy Chief Minister at his office to seek his help to deliver the essential food items to those families who have registered their requests for such assistance.
Over the last few days, we have received messages from a total of 1754 families in Kuching,Stampin, Puncak Borneo, Petrajaya and Siniawan applying for essential food items to be delivered to their houses because of the Movement Control Order (MCO).
Many have run out of money to buy food for their families due to the shut-down of business and economic activities.
The applicants have supplied their respective names, Identity Card numbers, addresses and contact numbers to us for us to forward the same to Welfare Department. We wish we could directly supply these food items to them but as the Minister of Defence has announced earlier, NGOs including political parties, are not allowed to deliver food from door to door, thus we have no choice but to go through the Welfare Department.
The applicants’ particulars were submitted to the Welfare Department in 3 batches, namely on 30-3-2020 (238 families), 31-3-2020 (611 families) and today 1-4-2020 (905 families).
At 2:00 p.m. today, our members have contacted almost all of the 238 applicants whose particulars were in the first batch of names whom we have submitted to the Welfare Department on 30-3-2020. None of them have received any essential food items from the Welfare Department.
As such, I have no choice but to write to the Chief Minister’s office requesting for urgent action to be taken.
Receiving me at Wisma Bapa Malaysia was the Deputy Chief Minister, Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas who has taken immediate action to contact the Minister in charge of Welfare Department YB Fatimah for urgent action to be taken.
A big thanks to Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah for his quick action. We hope that the Welfare Department will act quickly so that the applicants and their families will not go hungry in the next few days.
