KUCHING, Sept 5: Sarawak for Sarawakians (S4S) says the federal government sees Sarawak as a ‘cash tree’ and a ‘great ATM machine’ with no intention to develop Sarawak.
Its spokesperson Tan Kok Chiang said today marked the 118th day since Pakatan Harapan took over the federal government.
“According to Petronas’ 2017 Financial Report, as many as 850,000 barrels of crude oil were extracted per day from Sarawak.
“And according to today’s international market price, one barrel of crude oil is USD71.00 which is RM294. Between May 9 and now, the federal government has made RM11.8 billion from Sarawak, which is about RM100 million per day.
Tan believed that with Sarawak contributing so much to the national coffers, Dr Mahathir should have no excuse to not develop the Pan Borneo Highway, yet the latter has been using the excuse of “missing fund” to delay Pan Borneo Project.
He said Dr Mahathir’s multiple excuses not to develop Sarawak have angered the people of Sarawak and Sabah.
“According to the Malaysia Agreement 1963, Sarawak has the rights to claim the total of RM11.8 billion of oil revenue it produced since May 9.”
“However, it is all taken by the federal government and yet, Dr Mahathir is using the ‘missing fund’ as an excuse to delay Pan Borneo Highway project.”
“This clearly shows that to the federal government, Sarawak is only a ‘cash tree’ and a ‘great ATM machine’ whose only purpose is to cough out ‘cash’ for the survival of Peninsular Malaysia,” said Tan in a statement today.
Tan pointed out that apart from oil revenue, money collected from all forms of taxes are also going into federal coffers and despite so, Sarawak was only given a meagre allocation for development.
“This is clearly a breach of MA63,” said Tan.
Meanwhile, on Works Minister Baru Bian’s statement that the Works Ministry was only given RM5.8 billion annually for infrastructure development, Tan said that was nothing compared to the RM118 billion that Sarawak has lost since Pakatan Harapan government took over on May 9.
Tan said in view that the federal government was only interested to exploit Sarawak’s resources with no intention to develop Sarawak, there was no point for Sarawak to continue to stay within the Federation of Malaysia. — DayakDaily
