DAP questions announcement on power tariffs
KOTA KINABALU: DAP Sabah chairman Stephen Wong has questioned why the government announced that the electricity tariffs in the Peninsula will not be raised in the next three years while Sabah would remain in its current tariff rate for just six months.
“Does this imply that Sabah will face rising electricity tariffs after six months? Coincidentally, just six months after the general election, does this mean that Sabahans will face higher electricity tariffs if Barisan Nasional wins the next election?” he said when commenting on the recent announcement by Energy, Green Technology and Water Minister Datuk Seri Dr Maximus Ongkili.
Wong, who is Sandakan MP, said Pakatan Harapan believed it was necessary for the government to review all independent power plant treaties so that these power plants would not be profitoriented.
He said that generating electricity was originally a basic infrastructure and a basic demand by the citizens.
He said if an acquisition were to be carried out, Sabahans should examine whether the deal was reasonable, or else it would only help Tenaga Nasional Bhd (TNB) to earn money.
He also stressed that if SESB and TNB, which control over 80 percent of the shares, are unable to handle Sabah’s electricity services well, then the government should operate its own electricity service in Sabah instead of continuous privatisation.
Otherwise, it will force SESB to increase price and cause a heavy burden on the people and eventually cause the already weak market to suffer a blow, he said.
Steven, who is also MP for Sandakan, said Sabahans were suffering a lot nowadays.
“Sabahans have long faced the predicament of injustice on both sides of Malaysia. In terms of power supply, Sabah is still the state with the highest rate of power outage in the country. Sandakan and Tawau, on the east coast of Sabah are facing power outages almost every day,” he claimed.
He said that if the federal government could not manage SESB well, if the country with high earnings could not fulfil its social responsibility to help SESB, then it should seek a new mechanism to implement the idea of decentralization proposed by Pakatan Harapan so that the Sabah state government could run its own electricity operation.