(Petaling Jaya, Saturday):  On behalf of DAP PJ Action Team, I welcome very much the good effort from the Council to organize a dialogue with the residents on the up and coming budget of the council for 2007 and 2008 this morning in your office. It is always our belief that good governance, transparency and accountability shall be always upheld in the grass-root level especially in the level of local councils.

However, it is our opinions that concrete and detailed figures shall be provided so as to facilitate our discussion this morning so that we (the community, the public sector, the private sector, the environmental sector and the social sector) can identify exactly the problems.

The answers towards questions raised below could be of good use to enlighten all of us in order to give us some practical and pragmatic inputs for the budget.

1.    Would there be an announcement of a list of taxpayers, especially industrial and commercial taxpayers who delay in paying their assessments to the council for years? Although the officer who did the powerpoint presentation this morning mentioned that the amount has not been changing very much for years, it also shows that there are some taxpayers who constantly ignore their payments to the council.

2.    Would the council announce a list of compensations to be paid by the council as this is not reflected in the presentation just now? For example in 2005 Shah Alam High Court had ordered MPPJ to compensate 86 residents from Taman Desaria due to the council’s fraud on issuing Development Order.

Another good example is that the MPPJ Football club is just involved in a lawsuit with Football Association of Perlis regarding to a transfer of two players. Perlis Football Association is requesting for a compensation of RM60,000.

Are there any direct and indirect relations between the football club and the council? This is very serious question. For your information, MPSJ is now sued by a private outdoor advertising company for not applying TOL for the companies to set-up outdoor billboards. The whole exercise had caused a lot of financial damages to the council in terms of advertisement revenue. We certainly do not wish MBPJ to be ordered to pay huge sum of monetary compensation which will be channeled from the taxpayers money.

3.    For 2006, we are informed that RM166.49 million out of RM200.28 million revenue received by the council is spent for council’s administration. We were later informed that some of these monies were spent for the benefit of the people, for example payment to Alam Flora etc.

Could there be a more accountable explanation, for example an itemized payment under this RM166.49 million is made on how the council spends this RM166.49 million, as well as the RM33.72 million spent for development in PJ?

4.    Could there be full release of the number of staffs employed by MBPJ according to departments in year 2006 and the estimated numbers of new staffs to be employed/added by the Council?

5.    The expected revenue for the council for year 2007 and 2008 is RM208.85 million and RM214.41 million respectively. Is it true that the council considered that the long overdue unpaid assessment to be paid up by those errant taxpayers in order for the council to reach these numbers?

If not, are there not any worries from the Council that these numbers could be some arbitrary figures?

6.    The public is informed that each councilor is allocated RM100,000 every year as revealed by YB Yong Dai Ying (BN Gerakan ADUN for Bukit Lanjan) who is absent in the meeting this morning. Could there be a proper account made available in the public domain?

7.    Since the Mayor has claimed that the council had demolished some illegal billboards in PJ, would the Mayor like to report weekly on the numbers, sizes of the billboards as well as the owners of the billboards in order to uphold transparency and good governance?

8.    The council officer has mentioned that the budget must be prepared based on a balance budget concept. Would there be any contingency budget allocated for special amenities repairing projects?

To wait for one year is certainly a time too long to wait. The excuse of “not enough budget” is another example of the lacks of consultations with the people

9.    Conceptual suggestions – tourism in PJ shall be based on cultural development and integration. Museum is just another construction project which can be meaningless when the most elementary attraction to make PJ a tourism city is the essence of the culture we have. Although PJ has a limited history, the residents are of highly educated, instead of concentrating on shopping complexes which will eventually create more traffic jams, the Council can turn PJ into a city of academics and culture integration.

We certainly hope that the Council can provide us with a proper, accountable, professional and accurate answer (even though written answers) towards all our queries here. We also certainly hope that this is not a one-off PR practice and more dialogues must be done continuously.


Thank you.

Yours sincerely,


Lau Weng San,
Chairman of DAP PJ Action Team.
(016-3231563/[email protected])

S.K.:    

1. Y. Bhg. Dato’ Ahmad Termizi,                     
Datuk Bandar,
Majlis Bandaraya Petaling Jaya,
46400, Petaling Jaya, Selangor.
Tel: 603-79563544, Faks: 603-79581494    

2. Mr Edward Lee,                     
Chairman
All PJ Pro Action Committee (APPAC)

(05/08/2006)