Police report filed over ‘false’ allocation

A DAP member leads a group to file a report accusing MIC president G Palanivel of misleading the Indian community.

KUALA LUMPUR: A police report has been lodged by a group of Pakatan Rakyat leaders and NGOs accusing MIC and the government of misleading the Indian community over the RM180 million allocation announced by MIC president G Palanivel.

D Kamache, a DAP member from Pahang who led the group, claimed that the so-called allocation was false.

“It seems like MIC is trying to become a ‘champion of the community’ by harping on something with doesn’t exist,” said the former candidate for Sabai, a state assembly seat in Pahang.

Also present were V Ravindran from PKR, S Gobi Krishnan from POWER, S Barathidasan representing WargaAMAN and V Alegenthran from MIPAS.

The report was lodged at the Sentul police station here.

Recently, Palanivel announced that the federal government had disbursed RM180 million as a special allocation for Indians entrepreneurs.

It is learnt that the government had also set up a special task force called Special Secretariat for the Empowerment of Indian Entrepreneurs (SEED) to manage the fund.

Kamache however said the special task force and the MIC announcement were just an “eyewash” to gain Indian votes.

According to her, 13 local banks had principally agreed to give RM150 million in loan while TEKUN Nasional agreed to set a side RM30 million for Indians.

“However, there is no special privilege to get these loans. We have to follow the normal procedure to get it,” she said.

She added that most applications were rejected on the basis of not having a business background and other problems.

“So in what way is MIC claiming that it is a special allocation for Indians?” she asked.

Kamache also urged SEED not to waste the people’s time by conducting forums and discussions over the so-called fund.

Meanwhile, Gobi Krishnan said the police should take action against SEED for misleading the community.

Tamil school funds

In another development, Malacca PKR vice-chief G Rajendran sought an explanation over the status of the RM100 million allocation for Tamil schools as mentioned by Palanivel.

On Sep 19, Palanivel stated that the federal government approved a RM100 million allocation to upgrade and renovate Tamil schools in the country as part of the transformation programme for Tamil vernacular schools.

He added that the government also agreed to build six new Tamil schools nationwide.

Rajendran urged Palanivel to disclose if the allocation he mentioned was an additional allocation or the special allocation which was announced by Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak in the Budget 2012.

“If what he meant was the special allocation announced during the budget then it is crystal clear that MIC and the Education Ministry misused the money,” he told FMT.

According to him, the special RM100 million allocation was granted to upgrade and relocate Tamil schools with the status of partially aided only.

However, it appeared like MIC and the Education Ministry “abused the funds” by allocating it for the construction of new schools which would be entitled as fully-aided schools.

It was also reported that the expected cost to construct the Jalan Paya Besar Tamil school was RM10.4 million while another RM10 million was awarded to build another school in Taman Keladi, Sungai Petani, Kedah.

“So, in average it would cost more than RM60 million for all the six new schools and the balance will be channeled to partially-aided schools,” said Rajendran.

He pointed out that by allocating the special fund to new schools, it would affect the partially aided funds.