Penang to get 1mil vaccine doses this month

 

Chief minister Chow Kon Yeow said Penang would allocate self-test kits to its elected representatives to be distributed to the needy.

GEORGE TOWN: Penang will receive slightly over one million vaccine doses by the end of the month as part of the health ministry’s move to counter the surge in Covid-19 cases in the state.

Chief minister Chow Kon Yeow (PH-Padang Kota) said the first batch of 200,000 vaccines would arrive in the state tomorrow.

“The health minister expects 80% of the adult population to be fully vaccinated. After this, the people must expect to live with the virus, but we can control the surge and then move into the endemic phase,” he said in his winding-up address at the state assembly today.

As of Aug 30, 1.1 million or 60% of Penangites have been given their first dose of the vaccine. The state had the nation’s worst Covid-19 numbers per capita, with neighbouring Kedah coming second, over the past week.

In his speech, Chow said Penang would allocate 500 self-test kits each to the 40 assemblymen and 13 MPs in the state to be distributed to the needy.

He said given the drop in revenue this year caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the state had requested extra federal funding.

He said Penang was a major contributor of taxes and one of the highest contributors of foreign direct investment in the country, which made it the most deserving to receive more federal funding.

The state had RM93.5 million in uncollected revenue as of June. It collected RM386.9 million in June, only 76% of its target of RM506 million.

Dormant land to be disposed

Chow said to increase state revenue, Penang would dispose of dormant land via tender, handing it over to a state development arm and reclassifying rural areas into towns so as to increase taxes.

He said other measures included converting “interim register” lands which were in the “tens of thousands”, to be monetised. Interim register lands are those where owners cannot be determined.

Chow said the Penang government had only sold 485 acres of state land to 10 companies and made RM1.9 billion, not 1,100 acres as claimed by opposition leader Muhamad Yusoff Mohd Nor (BN-Sungai Dua).

He said the 1,100 acres of land sold was the combined figure of land sold by the Penang Development Corporation, the state government and the Penang Island City Council.

Yusoff had sought clarification over claims that RM12.5 billion worth of land totalling 1,100 acres had been sold since 2011.

Land transaction backlog to be resolved soon

Chow also took note of the huge backlog of land transactions due to a staff shortage at the state land office, with the Penang Bar Committee writing in to say that about 3,000 land-related transactions had yet to be dealt with.

According to the committee, the 3,000-odd transactions involved 9,045 submissions related to 3,015 land titles, he said.

He said the committee had also decided not to further burden the land office until it settled the backlog through appointments on a case-by-case basis, adding that an online system would be developed to make land transactions easier by the end of the year.

On Covid-19 variants of concern, Chow said there were 32 identified Delta variant cases in the state, of whom eight had died. A total of 27 in the group had not been vaccinated and five had had their first doses.

Lab testing for Delta variants took “a long time”, over a month to process, he said in response to an earlier query on the matter.

The state assembly was then adjourned sine die. - FMT