PUTRAJAYA, July 13 — Tan Sri Fong Chan Onn said today he may take legal action against the DAP’s Tony Pua for the latter’s recent criticisms and allegations against the country’s renewable energy authority.
The Sustainable Energy Development Authority (SEDA) chairman said this today in response to “that statement (by Pua) calling me incompetent and a liar” yesterday.
“I have been directed by legal advisers in SEDA and the ministry to study his statement and see if SEDA and the ministry will take any legal recourse,” Fong(picture) told a press conference here today.
The Alor Gajah MP said “calling a person a liar is a serious offence”.
“Because allegations are serious so my legal advisers will look into that and see if we can seek any legal recourse.”
Pua yesterday slammed SEDA for awarding lucrative feed-in tariff (FiT) solar power contracts to Petronas’ new chairman Tan Sri Mohd Sidek Hassan’s daughter, saying that her companies have “no capital” and “no track record”.
Pua and his PKR ally Nurul Izzah Anwar had on Tuesday noted that both Suzi Suliana Mohd Sidek and her husband, Todd Morath, held a controlling stake in 12 out of a total of 32 companies that had won the contracts amounting to 32.4 per cent of the nation’s energy quota fixed for between 1MW (megawatt) and 5MW.
Pua blasted Fong for reportedly saying that “the selection was above board as it was done through an online system”, refuting the latter’s claim in The Star on Wednesday that all companies selected had fulfilled the technical and financial requirements.
Pua noted that all 12 companies controlled by Suzi Suliana and her business partners “were set up only a few weeks before the 2 December 2011 application deadline”, with at least eight of them only set up on November 11, 2011.
In response, Fong said there was no reason to reject a company’s application “just because they were set up last month”.
Pua urged SEDA to “reopen the bidding process for the solar energy quota to ensure that all players are given fair treatment”, saying that unqualified bidders should be “knocked out from the qualification process”.
Sidek retired as Chief Secretary to the Government last month and was immediately named Petronas chairman.
“He (Pua) is questioning the robustness of system and the lawyers are looking into it. The ministry’s legal adviser will advise me accordingly,” Fong said.
Asked if he suspected any political motive behind Pua’s allegations, the MCA leader said he did not want to speculate.
Malaysia aims to have over 3,000MW of green energy on the national grid by 2020 and the federal government introduced a new policy last December to develop more independent power producers (IPPs), including households, to provide it.
This is not the first time the federal opposition pact has questioned SEDA’s FiT quota mechanism to encourage long-term use of cleaner energy.
Last February, DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng said the system limiting energy producers to RM300 million on a first-come-first-served basis to each of the four renewable energy sources was not very efficient.
He pointed out that SEDA had invited the public, including households, and small-time IPPs who contributed up to 30MW, although it was limited to 5MW in solar PVs, to apply and book the amount of renewable energy intended for the national grid and suggested Malaysia learn from Germany.
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