KUCHING: Senator Susan Chemerai Anding has chided Democratic Action Party (DAP) Sarawak chairman Chong Chieng Jen over his recent comments that the Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) state government was also to blame for the unbalanced development between Sarawak and Malaya.
“Whatever Chong alleged about GPS, nothing can beat what Pakatan Harapan (PH) did to Sarawakians in their short 22 months as the federal government. Among other things, they wasted no time to cancel eight of our bridges and road projects that had been earmarked and approved for development, and they denied us funds for our dilapidated schools also already approved and made us pay first for them,” she said on Saturday (Sept 25).
She pointed out that this had disenfranchised Sarawakians of much needed infrastructure and education facilities.
Chemerai said Chong and DAP were undeniable party to such decision and had done nothing to stop the PH federal government from disenfranchising Sarawakians.
She noted that then Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng, had even said that Sarawak would be bankrupt in three years’ time.
“It was also the PH government, of which Chong was a part of, that fought Sarawak in Court when we sought to enforce our rights to State Sales Tax (SST) under our Oil Mining Ordinance,” she said.
She urged Chong to read his own ‘report card’ first before reading that of GPS.
“In the short 22 months you were given power, you made Sarawakians poor by setting us back many years because Sarawak had to fork out from its own coffers for these cancelled projects which could have otherwise been used for other much needed infrastructure and education projects in Sarawak,” she said.
The GPS senator emphasised that whether a state was poor or rich was not just measured by salary alone, explaining that the state of its infrastructure and education were also major indicators.
Chong, in his Parliamentary debate recently, had said that while the federal government was responsible for the unbalanced situation between Sarawak and Malaya, the GPS government – which was previously Sarawak Barisan Nasional (BN) which had governed the state for decades – was also to blame.
