First let me correct the professional ignorance by some media on the sale of 49% share in Tropical Island Resort Sdn Bhd(TIRSB), the company that was granted 80 acres of land in Pulau Jerejak in 2001 at 73% below market value. The whole island has a size of 895 acres and apart from a water reservoir, Boustead shipyard, the 80 acres of land were approved for development to TIRSB, set up in 1997 where UDA has a majority 51% share. Penang Development Corporation (PDC) took the remaining 49% with a RM 15.44 million investment.
TIRSB conducted a Request for Proposal(RFP) in 2013 where the decision to award the tender was made by the Board of Directors of UDA. The Penang state government or PDC had no role in deciding on the tender because it was decided by UDA since they are the majority shareholder and can do what they want.
It is just ridiculous for the MCA-owned Star and Gerakan to claim that Penang has lost the ownership of Pulau Jerejak entirely after the state through PDC sold its 49 percent ownership to Ideal Properties subsidiary, Q Island Development. It is not ownership of the island that was lost, but ownership of 80 acres of Pulau Jerejak that was lost not now but in 2001. In 2001, BN and Gerakan betrayed Penangites sold the 80 acres at RM12.95 million, when the then market price was RM47.6 million, a loss of RM34.6 million.
How can State Barisan Nasional (BN) chairman Teng Chang Yeow, also say that if the Pakatan state government had gazetted the island as a state park eight years ago, Penangites would not have lost every inch of the island to a private company? If Teng has not been an EXCO, we can understand his ignorance when he said that you can gazette private land owned by TIRSB or even the private shipyard owned by Boustead.
But one questions Teng’s basic intelligence if we can just simply gazette the whole island, including privately-owned land as a state park. The only way for this to be done is by first acquiring private land, which would require costs of hundreds of million of ringgit of up to RM500 milion. Will the BN Federal government furnish us with the funds for forcible acquisition?
Unlike BN, the Pakatan state government has not approved any additional land in Pulau Jerejak for development. After the 80 acres has been clearly demarcated and the Boustead shipyard, the remaining land in the 895 acre island shall be gazetted as a state park.
We are still waiting for Teng to show proof that in 2013, I had rejected a deal to sell the 49% stake in TIRSB to Ideal Properties, that could make a potential profit for PDC of RM 220 million. Teng claimed that instead of approving the joint venture in 2013, the state sold the 49 percent island shares for RM156 million this year. This is untrue because PDC never received any offers in 2013 that would make us a profit of RM220 million.
Teng claims he got the documentary evidence to prove that there was an offer from Ideal that would have earned PDC a profit of RM220 million, but why is it the BN media from Star to Sin chew who reported Teng’s lies did not press Teng to show the proof when challenged by me?