Media statement by Dr. Hiew King Cheu in Kota Kinabalu on Thursday, 7^th June 2012:

Reduce fuel prices now

The people did not benefited from the drop of basic food and energy prices in the international market.

The crude oil price for delivery in July has fell US$3.30, or 3.8%, to US$83.23 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the lowest settlement since October 7^th. The prices fell 17% in May, the biggest slide since December 2008.

Natural Gas for July delivery dropped 9.6%, or 4%, to settle at US$2.326 per million British Thermal units on the Nymex, which dropped to a 10 year intraday low of US$1.902 on April 19^th, are down 22% this year.

This information is obtained from http://www.bloomberg.com.

With this severe drop in crude oil and natural gas prices, what happen to our prices here? Do we see that the government is going to reduce our prices to follow? The government promised that our oil and gas prices will float and to follow the international prices trend, and according to that the government should by now follows the drop of prices to give us a big cut on prices. When are they going to do that and rather will they do that?

To date the international prices had dropped that much but there is no sign of our oil and gas prices reducing, what went wrong? The fact is that the government is not willing to assist the general population to help them to cut their personal expenditure. The prices of oil and gas in the country have gone up and up in spite of the international prices dropped in prices.

The country bought in cheaper fuel now but the people still paying high priced fuel, and this only means that the government does not have to spend more to subsidize. This is again on the expense of the people. Is this what we called the 'caring government'?

I call upon the government to immediate to adjust the fuel prices to meet a fair prices level and not to continue to make the people spending more on this essential fuel item. The people have suffered a lot in the past years by spending extra on their car fuel and cooking gas, and this is the time to have the prices cut back to a lower level to help them to save a bit of money for other essentials.

This will not cost the country a lot of money when compared to the corruption money. What is the use the Petronas keeps on announcing great profit and yet the people suffered by paying expensive fuel.

* Dr Hiew King Cheu, MP for Kota Kinabalu