KUCHING, Dec 28: Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS) Youth chief Datuk Snowdan Lawan has criticised Puncak Borneo MP Willie Mongin for his ignorance regarding Rural Transformation Programme (RTP) funds.
“This is a shallow argument, ignorant without reference to historical facts and origin. Surprisingly, if he was a true Sarawakian, he would have the guilt questioning the source of our RTP fund, knowing too well Sarawak is the major contributor (to the federal coffers),” he said in a statement issued here today.
Snowdan emphasised that it would be more honourable of Willie to pull in more funds for Sarawak coffers from federal to leapfrog Sarawak’s development agenda.
“It now appears that he is more a stumbling block instead of accelerating our efforts. This is another show of mere ignorance by YB Puncak Borneo as he did earlier criticise the granting of RM300 allowance to our appointed councillors, not knowing Selangor councillors received a more hefty sum. When will he repent from reasoning irrationally?,” he added.
Snowdan was commenting on Willie’s Facebook post which insinuated that, RTP, although state projects, the fund in flow via the State Financial Secretary, are therefore not totally coming from the state, thus the federal government can also claim credit.
“Notably YB Willie does not understand how revenue collection and expenditure spending are derived in a Federation like Malaysia in relation and pursuant to a binding MA63 (Malaysia Agreement 1963),” he said.
The Assistant Minister of Youth and Spots pointed out that one of the reasons why Singapore left the Federation in 1965 was because it insisted on having the control of its internal economy and to have liberty to spend what was collected internally without having to remit to the Federal.
He reminded that one of the very facets of the birth of Malaysia during Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman’s time then was the Federated Malay states would uplift the development of the two Borneo states of Sarawak and Sabah to be on par with Malaya.
“Little did these two Borneo states realised that during the 4th prime ministership (of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad), for 22 years from 1981 to 2003, that far from developing us, our wealth and riches were exploited to develop Malaya instead, all on the pretext of national integration.
“And still, what is dug out from us, dubbed the black gold (oil) and taxes (in the form of various taxes such as stamp duties, excise duties, import duties, RPGT (real property gain tax) and oil and gas revenue, are far exceeding what we received all along, considering Sarawak’s gross domestic product (GDP) over the country’s overall contribution,” he stressed.— DayakDaily
