Treasury trying to mislead Indian community

DAP’s M Kulasegaran says the RM2.89 billion allocated to Indians included both annual operating and development expenditure,

GEORGE TOWN: DAP leader M Kulasegaran has suggested that the federal treasury’s claim of an allocation of RM2.89 billion for the Indian community could be an attempt to mislead and confuse them.

The DAP national vice-chairman, in pointing out that Treasury Secretary-General Mohd Irwan Serigar Abdullah who made that claim, said the Finance Ministry, obviously under pressure, then clarified that the allocation was between 2012 to 2014 and represented both the annual operating and development expenditure to ministries and agencies to implement various programmes and projects for the Indian community.

He said the post of treasury secretary-general was no ordinary one and that Mohd Irwan certainly knew the difference between operating and development expenditure.

He also remarked that if Mohd Irwan expected such a justification to be accepted, soon the Barisan Nasional federal government would be counting the salaries of Indian ministers and teachers as help to the Indian community.

“How could he have included operating expenditures in his trumpet blowing act for the BN government?

“Was it an attempt to mislead and confuse the Indian community?

“I find the ministry’s clarification rather shocking and disappointing,” said Kula in a statement here yesterday.

He said the ministry should have provided a detailed breakdown of the allocation and honestly revealed if the allocation had achieved programme objectives and truly benefited the Indian community.

He questioned why there were only 1,000 Indian youths who had been trained despite a RM50 million allocation in the 2013 budget meant to train 3,200.

Kula said he was told the programme needed time when he raised the matter in Parliament.

Stressing that the problem was not about more time, he called on the federal government to show more real political will to truly help the Indians and to ensure all programmes were effective and beneficial to the community.

He recalled former MIC president S Samy Vellu’s 2008 statement appealing to the BN government to immediately address seven critical Indian issues:

•  equitable participation in the share market;
• Indian intake in public universities;
•  better employment opportunities, especially in the public sector;
•  an increase in the number of government scholarships;
•  greater access to entrepreneurship training and micro-credit loans;
• an effective urban poverty eradication programme; and.
•  the establishment of a dedicated mechanism to monitor and evaluate the delivery of public sector services in a just and fair manner.

“The BN government should produce a report card on this,” Kula said.