GOVERNMENT FAILED IN GREEN TECHNOLOGY

By : PKR MEDIA

PKR Supreme Council member cum PKR Sabah Secretary, Dr Roland Chia Ming Shen lamented that the 2012 Budget has not benefitted the Sabahans enough in terms of poverty eradication and closing the gap between the rural & urban population.

There are NO pro-active measures & concrete steps in lifting up Sabah out from being the second poorest state in Malaysia despite being the one of the fourth largest state in Malaysia in oil and gas production.

The government needs to spell out how is the RM5 Billion Ringgit going to address the perennial poverty in Sabah. There is still a big vacuum between the basic infrastructure in both the urban middle class and the rural poor.

For example, there is no point of just waiving school fees and hand out book vouchers to students, if students in the rural poor still need to travel or to walk to nearest school which is 20-30km away.

Accessibility to a decent secondary education is still a perennial problem in Sabah & Sarawak. The government should provide community buses to solve these problems instead. In the urban areas, taxi fares remained as one of the highest in the nation as both taxi drivers and car owners complained of unavailability of NGV Facilities for both taxis and private vehicles users.

On a national front, what was extremely disappointing is the announcement of more mega projects such as the Coastal Highway JB-Nusa and the Taiping Heritage Tourism Project at a cost of RM978 million. These would certainly go into cost over-runs, be subject to closed tenders and cronyism.

No change from the past coupled with the sheer size of the budget. RM232.8 billion is a lot of money, especially when we are looking at a 9.4% rise in expenditure and this contradicts the statement that the rise of expenditure will reduce the country’s deficit of 4.7% from 5.4% of GDP. How this is going to be achieved is yet to be seen. However, the fact remains that in terms of amount, it would be the biggest deficit in Malaysian history.

The other issue that the government failed to address is to pragmatically develop the potential of Green Technology. After the Prime Minister’s vision of Putrajaya and Cyberjaya as green technology centres, RM1.5 billion in soft loans for green technology companies and a pledge to reduce Malaysia’s carbon footprint by 40% by 2025, there was no further development in this despite having just organized a massive Green Technology exhibition in September called IGEM hosted by the Ministry of Energy, Green Technology and Water (KeTTHA).

PKR Sabah hoped is not just mere lip service to the environment? Development in Green Technology is crucial so that the country will have options once fossil fuel gets depleted counting by the days.

There are no incentives given to households & SME Enterprise in installing solar panels to utilized and harness green energy for their daily consumption in a bid to reduce carbon footprint by 40% by 2025 against the backdrop in increasing electricity tariffs.

The other losers are the middle income earners, and incentives for business. Although there are substantial allocations for entrepreneurs starting out new businesses, liberalising business by dropping taxes such as import taxes on cars or eliminating the controversial APs would have been a very popular move.

In USA a Toyota Camry costs RM70,000 but in Malaysia it costs RM170,000 or even more. No allocation for improving public transport and access would also disappoint the daily commuter. The annual driving license should be abolished. In western countries, drivers license is a form of identity card just like a MyKad provided complimentary by the authorities and not a scheme to rip off the drivers.