EARTH HOUR TIME: Ngieng (third right) with SMC secretary Hii Chang Kee (second right) and councillors show the Earth Hour poster after the press conference.
SIBU: From next month onwards, the monthly full council meeting of Sibu Municipal Council will be followed immediately by a press conference.
Council chairman Datuk Tiong Thai King said the press conference was for reporters to seek clarifications on what had transpired at the meetings.
“Myself, my deputy and chairmen of the various standing committees and council senior officers shall be at the press conference,” he said when chairing this month’s full council meeting yesterday.
Meanwhile, his deputy, Daniel Ngieng, told reporters yesterday that the full council meetings would be preceded by a pre-meeting from 8.30 to 10am.
The pre-meeting was to allow councillors to raise issues, make suggestions or comments on matters raised by standing committees.
“This way, a particular standing committee can go back and re-discuss, and, if necessary, make new decisions if there are matters of importance.
“Such a pre-meeting is allowed under our standing orders.”
Earlier, Dudong assemblyman Yap Hoi Liong, four DAP members, and PKR Sibu branch chairman Simon Tiong were stopped from entering the council’s conference to observe the monthly meeting.
Yesterday’s meeting was said to have lasted only about 15 minutes.
Yap said in the past such a meeting lasted about two hours.
He believed it was short yesterday because a pre-meeting preceded it.