MCA wants minister who ‘empathises’ with Chinese new villages

 

MCA has urged the newly minted Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob to appoint a housing and local government minister who is sensitive to the needs of predominately Chinese Malaysian new villages.

In a statement today, MCA vice-president Ti Lian Ker (above) claimed that new village communities had been neglected since the Pakatan Harapan government took power in 2018.

“The prime minister has many new villages in his constituency of Bera, hence he will be able to comprehend and empathise with the frustrations of the new villagers when their network was disconnected or disrupted.

“Not all that's new is good and neither is all that's old, bad. In the case of the administration of the new villages, we need a minister or at least a deputy who can empathise, understand and comprehend the needs and expectations of the new villages,” he said in a statement today.

For context, the post of housing and local government minister is traditionally held by an MP from MCA.

This continued until the party was nearly wiped out in the 2013 general election and Umno’s Abdul Rahman Dahlan was appointed to the post instead, who is later succeeded by Noh Omar from the same party.

Despite this setback, Ti said Umno ministers continued to leverage on systems developed by MCA to serve the needs of new villages.

Among others, he said MCA had appointed a network of new village development officers and village chiefs, and an MCA assemblyperson is always appointed as a state executive councillor in charge of the new villages.

When Harapan took power, however, Ti said although DAP had the support of nearly 90 percent of new villagers, it lacked the outreach, expertise, or experience to fill the vacuum that MCA had left behind.

MCA returned to government after Perikatan Nasional took power last year, though Housing and Local Government Minister Zuraida Kamaruddin was retained in her post in Muhyiddin Yassin’s cabinet.

During this period, Ti said MCA had appointed an official to liaise with Zuraida on restoring the old power structure in new villages, but these efforts had failed.

“As of today, when the PN government collapsed, there is an obvious disconnect between the government under Harapan and PN in respect of the new village administration and the residents.

“Many new village residents have approached me, complaining and expressing their grouses that collectively indicated of a sense of abandonment since ‘Malaysia Baru’ arrived in 2018.

“I would like to seize this opportunity to call upon Ismail Sabri to rectify this sense of neglect and abandonment, that is akin to being a step-child, amongst the new villagers as a result of the changes under Malaysia Baru,” he said. - Mkini