By Ling Hui
KUCHING, May 9: Padungan assemblyman Chong Chieng Jen is urging the Sarawak government to stop hoarding land and halt electricity export to attract foreign direct investment into the State.
On the land hoarding issue, he quoted an example whereby a local entrepreneur was allegedly deprived of the opportunity to purchase a one-acre state land at Demak Laut Industrial Park as most of the land, though empty and inactive, are owned by private companies.
“Those lands have been sitting there empty with no buildings or activities, but every single piece has been sold off, maybe to someone with connections.
“And that is what I call land hoarding while those who are interested and have the intention to generate productive economic activity are deprived of the lands,” Chong claimed.
Chong also opined that the Sarawak government should leverage on the State’s clean and cheap electricity to attract FDI instead of selling them off to Singapore and Kalimantan.
“To a certain extent, the government has failed to capitalise on our (Sarawak’s) strengths when we have cheap energy.
“We have, at the moment, about 10 or 20 per cent surplus yet we are talking about selling 1,000MW, which constitutes 20 per cent of the total energy generated in Sarawak, to Singapore and Kalimantan.
“This cheap energy should be used to attract FDI,” he said when debating the TYT’s speech at the august House here today.
Meanwhile, Chong held that Sarawak should tap into the pool of investment that is rushing into Malaysia, and not remain a bystander.
He suggested two investments, namely the RM10 billion investment from Microsoft to develop Malaysia as a hub for cloud computing and related advanced technologies, including generative AI as well as the impending investment from Google. — DayakDaily
