Keadilan’s Young Professionals Bureau Chair Seah Jhen Pei is deeply regret with the statement released by MCA National Youth Vice Chairman Chua Hock Kuan. Chua’s statement is disgraceful, obviously ignoring rakyat’s interest and trying to swipe the government’s shortcomings under the carpet.

Earlier, Member of Parliament for Tanjong Malim, YB Chang Lih Kang has raised concerns over additional RM50 billion loan guarantee that government has to issue for MRT 3, on top of the existing committed loans of up to RM114.9 billion for DanaInfra and Prasarana. Despite Chang was presenting data sourced from Ministry of Finance, National Audit Department and Companies Commission of Malaysia, Chua however, regarded them as “unfounded response, unprofessional and absurd”.

Chua should be mindful that an elected legislator’s responsibility is to check and balance against the executives (the government), on behalf of the rakyat to ensure the national interest is safeguarded. Hence, Chua’s comment on Chang’s statement is definitely an insult to the legislature.

Moreover, Chang has urged the MRT 3 project to be referred to Parliamentary Select Committees for further deliberation and scrutiny so that the RM50 billion project can be implemented professionally and the failure of MRT 1 in ridership will not be repeated. Hence, why is Chua advising Chang to report it to the police or the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission? Should Chua has a better understanding of how our democracy system works, he may not publish such ignorant remarks.

Seah would like to remind Chua that as a youth leader of the ruling coalition, he ought to defend his leaders with facts and figures. With Prasarana reporting annual losses ranged between RM3 to 5 billion for the past 3 years, how can Prasarana service its debts if the rail and bus services fail to achieve their ridership targets? With MRT 2 opening this year, and MRT 3 in the future, operational losses are expected to increase exponentially if there are no ridership improvements. What are the government new policies to reduce the use of private vehicles?
These are some of the questions perhaps a MCA youth leader like Chua should help to answer and enlighten all Malaysians.

Lastly, the idea of “delayed mega projects resulting with sharp increases in costs” is merely a myth in the case of MRT projects in Malaysia. Prasarana’s debt has increased RM12.3 billion since the opening year of MRT 1 in 2017.
It is only absurd if the government does not learn any lesson from MRT 1 for upcoming mega projects. Otherwise, the rakyat would be burdened with billions of debts to bailout these failed projects in the future.

SEAH JHEN PEI
Ketua Biro Profesional AMK