The Urban Wellbeing, Housing and Local Government Ministry has still not informed neither local councils nor district offices in Penang to take over the approval and processing of direct funding for new villages

The Urban Wellbeing, Housing and Local Government Ministry has still not informed neither local councils nor district offices in Penang to take over the approval and processing of direct funding for new villages. This follows newspaper reports that were then confirmed by MCA on September 12, 2013, that the Urban Wellbeing, Housing and Local Government Ministry is expected to cease direct funding to the 607 new villages in Peninsular Malaysia.

Instead funds needed for any infrastructural development in future will require approval from local councils. Such a decision will affect the development of 607 new villages comprising 450 Chinese new villages, 113 Kampung Tersusun and 44 Chinese-majority fishing villages.

Infrastructural development funding for new villages amounted to RM 50 million yearly, which were then increased to RM70 million for the 13th General Elections this year. In the past the direct funding method was employed, which was simple and effective. Allocations were given to new village development and security committees (JKKK) which can directly approve applications based on development needs, such as roads, drainage and building public halls or sports facilities.

By now shifting the approval mechanism to local councils or district offices instead of JKKKs, this increase in administrative red tape will not only burden the overworked government officials but also cause unnecessary delay. The District Offices and local councils are already busy processing the development allocations provided for by the state government. The old mechanism of the JKKKs deciding on development funding should be retained as the JKKKs are most familiar with the local problems in new villages that need to be resolved.

For this reason, should the Urban Wellbeing, Housing and Local Government pass on the allocations to local councils, state governments should redirect it to the new village JKKKs to process it to ensure that the development needs of the rakyat are taken care of. Such change in funding mechanism has the direct negative effect of either delaying or even denying infrastructure funds to new villages.

This will only create an impression of the BN Federal government retaliating against the Chinese community and new villages for not supporting BN in the 13th General Elections. Clearly, not only national reconciliation mooted by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak is dead, but that 1Malaysia is now abandoned. Instead of national reconciliation we have national retaliation against the majority 51% of the population that voted for PR and rejected BN.