Kelana Jaya MP suspends welfare programme for constituents

PKR's Wong Chen takes to Facebook to reveal that fax sent by Selangor government led to decision to suspend Welfare Month programme.

PETALING JAYA: A PKR MP from Selangor has decided to suspend welfare related programmes under his constituency until further notice.

Kelana Jaya MP Wong Chen revealed this in a Facebook post this morning explaining that a decision was made after a fax was sent to his office late Friday afternoon from the Selangor government.

“We were about to close office, when my office received a fax from the Selangor government. Having discussed the matter with my staff, we decided to suspend our Welfare Month programme until further notice.

“We have to date processed some 300 plus applications for Welfare Month. As time is of the essence, my staff and interns will be going to Desa Mentari this morning to put up public notices and we will also be calling community leaders to inform them,” he wrote without elaborating on the specifics of the Welfare Month programme.

When contacted, he declined to reveal the contents of the fax sent by the Selangor government which led to the suspension of the welfare programme his office had planned.

“Cannot talk about it (the fax). We are not going to issue any public statement on this,” he told FMT, adding that his only concern now was that his constituents were informed that the programme had been cancelled.

“They are spending RM10 to RM20 to hire a taxi to come to the office. So we have to tell them urgently that the programme is off for now.”

In his FB posting, he said some 300 plus applications for the Welfare Month programme had already been processed.

“As time is of the essence, my staff and interns will be going to Desa Mentari this morning to put up public notices and we will also be calling community leaders to inform them,” he said.

Wong Chen said for now his office will cease community allocations and refocus on his Parliamentary work of public policy research and the policy research training of interns.

The first-time MP had been in the news last month, when he revealed some concern over what he saw as a lack of transparent, fair and proper handling of an audit on the spending of the annual RM250,000 budget allocation to his office.

Saying that the the audit findings had alleged that his office had failed to follow guidelines, Wong Chen decided to make a public disclosure of the audit findings and the lack of answers from the Selangor state treasury despite repeated queries from him and his staff.

“I feel strongly that my office has been denied natural justice and the right to be heard regarding the audit findings of not complying with guidelines.

“Which is why my office immediately challenged the audit findings and provided a point by point rebuttal and also 4,000 pages of documents.

“My office also wrote four letters to the Selangor government authorities, all of which remain unanswered,” he said, explaining why he decided to go public on his grouse with the state government.

It is not clear, nor did Wong Chen wish to confirm, if the fax from the Selangor government had been related to the audit findings he spoke about last month. -FMT