Tawau MP urges govt to re-study price increases

TAWAU: Tawau member of parliament Datuk Chua Soon Bui has calld on the government related companies having monopolies on severvices and commodaties.

According to Chua, the price increases have the effect of victimising the people.

“The prices of essential goods and services have kept on increasing resulting from the increase in service tax from five per cent to six, the hikes on the prices of petrol and diesel, the recnt imposition of an additional of RM50 levy on foreign workers, the increase in price of essential items like sugar and cooking oil,” she  said yesterday.

“The recent announcernent by telcos imposing a service tax of six per cent on mobile phone users has sparked a public uproar forcing the  government to intervene.  The matter should not have arisen in the first place.  These telcos should be monitored and penalised if they are found to have colluded in price-fixing,” she said.

Chua added the explanation by the government (by Datuk Seri Idris Jala) that the country would go bankrupt and therefore necessitated the imposition and increase of varios taxes was unreasonable. This Had caused in the people to suffer needlessly in other to increase the government’s coffers.

“With the global economic recession, the hardest hit are hardest hit are the middle and lower income families who have to make ends meet every month because of escalating food prices and living costs.

“If the government is serious with its ‘people first’ concept, why does the government have to continue to dig deeper into the people’s pockets rather then reexamine the westtages and leakages incurred by all the ministres and  the government linked companies?” she stressed.

“Why does the government ignore the burden and sufferings of the majority of the people and continue to spend luxuriously as in the case of the recent Hari Raya open house held in Permatang Pauh which cost the taxpayers RM6million?

“There are still a large number of families in Sabah who couldn’t even afford to celebrate Hari Raya with their families,” Chua pointed out.

She criticised the government for harbouring and protecting companies having monopolies to increase their charges and prices willy-nilly quoting Independent Power Producers (IPPs), internet service providers sugar, rice and cooking oil producers and telcos, among the biggers culprints, despite having made substantial profits at the expense of the people.

“And worst of all, they have continued to provide poor service to their customers despite the many complaints received which have been totally ignored by them,” chua lamented.

She urgerd the government to liberalise the business sector since monopolies have done more damage to the nation’s economy, likening them to ‘vimpiressucking the people’s blood,’ with more families falling below the national average of poverty.

“Liberalisation will encourage competation and will provide greater benefit to the people in terms of prices, fees and to generate higher productivity and efficiency in services,” she said.

She said despite the people of Sabah being disappointedand angry with the on-going disruptions and outages in power and water supplies, yet, the government still increased the electricity tarifs.

“With the huge profits generated by the IPPS at the expense of the people, why does the government want to continue to protect the monopolised IPPs? With therecent passing of the renewable energy bill at the parliament which didn’t stipulate that the subsidy for the ‘feed-in tariff’ subsidy has to be borne by the people. I toyally disagree with the proposal to impose an additional charge fo one per cent by December on consumer bills over RM77.40 per month and I urge the ministry to withdraw this move now,” she said.

“Although the Ministry of Information, Communication and Culture has announced the deferring of the six per cent service tax proposed to be imposed by telcos on mobile phone users, I urge the ministry also to seriously look into the regular complaints of ‘drop or hang’ calls.

“It has been reported the Maxis and Celcom had announced per-tax profits of RM2 billion each with DiGi earning RM1 billion.

“Isn’t this reflective of the fact that the market is big enough to encourage better competitors for better services? It is likewise for Internet service providers,” Chua said.

The Borneo Post

Thursday, 15 September 2011

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