What have you done for poor Indians?

This is the question posed by MIC Youth chief T Mohan to Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng, and he wants an answer.

GEORGE TOWN: Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng must reveal what his state government has done to upgrade the socio-economic standards of working class Indians in Penang.

According to MIC Youth chief T Mohan, the lower income Indians could not see a single policy to benefited them so far.

He questioned how could the lower income Penang Indians feel shortchanged if the Pakatan Rakyat government had been fair to all based on needs and not race?

“Surely something is amiss here. Indians want to know whether the DAP government has implemented any constructive and comprehensive policies to benefit the Indians.

“If there is, the state government should enlighten us,” he dared Lim’s administration.

Mohan demanded Lim not to deploy his “Indian mandores” but to come forward personally to disclose his government’s policies.

He said the deputy chief minister’s post reserved for the Indians had proven to be more of a decorative item to reflect the multi-racial mask of DAP.

“The DCM is clearly a powerless mandore for Lim. We don’t want to hear from mandores. We want to hear from Lim,” Mohan insisted.

He said working class Indians were frustrated with the current inflated property price and lack of affordable houses.

No affordable houses

Until today, he said the Pakatan government had not built a single affordable house to benefit the lower income people, who were pre-dominantly Indians and Malays.

He pointed out that the Auditor-General’s Report had stated that the state government had failed to build a single unit of low-cost housing since 2008.

As a result, Mohan said, the lower-income Penangites were facing acute shortage of affordable houses.

He said housing projects carried out in Penang for the past four years were only posh houses for the rich.

He said the state government had lacked commitment to resolve Indian housing issues in Mak Mandin, Batu Kawan and Bagan Dalam’s Hujung Batu.

He also said the Lim administration had yet to allot land on its own for Tamil schools, except transferring land titles for plots already alienated by the previous Barisan Nasional state government.

Even for Hindu temples, he said, the state government had given land mainly for temples managed by cronies of a certain politician.

The annual RM1.75 million state funds allotted for Tamil schools, he said, was too little compared with over RM40 million given to Malay schools and nearly RM30 million for Chinese schools.

Divided by 28 schools in Penang, he said each school got only RM62,500.

If based on the estimated 150,000 Indians living in Penang, he said each Indian was allotted nearly RM12 each.

“Lim’s policies have been pro-developer and populist schemes to fish votes. His policies have not been people-orientated and good governance. Indians rightly feel betrayed by the state government,” he told FMT.

Gerakan’s resolutions

Yesterday, the Penang Gerakan annual delegates’ conference passed several resolutions pertaining to housing woes of the lower income people.

A resolution called on Lim’s government to build low-cost and low-medium cost houses for the group.

Another resolution urged the state government, in line with the principles of accountability and transparency, to reveal the amount of monies collected and its usage so far, in lieu of the monies received for the exemption to provide low-cost housing at RM40,000 per unit, by developers.

The conference also passed a resolution to support BN’s proposal to build 20,000 low-cost and low-medium cost houses for Penangites if it returned to power in the next polls.