Lau (third left) with Pelawan assemblyman David Wong (left), Bukit Assek assembywoman Irene Chang (third right) and Sibu MP Oscar Ling (second right) during the distribution of the calendars at the central market.
SIBU: Lanang MP Alice Lau had declared that she has received RM1 million in government grant so far for the benefit of the people in her constituency since the Pakatan Harapan (PH) took over Putrajaya after the 14th general election (G14) on May 9 last year.
According to her, she received the first RM500,000 one month after PH won the G14.
“Later we received the second batch amounting to RM500,000 in October last year. From the first batch, we gave out RM200,000 to 59 bodies and another RM200,000 for 19 minor projects and the remainder for welfare emergency use such as for fire victims.
“From the second batch of government grant, RM400,000 was given to 83 bodies and RM100,00 for welfare aid purposes,” she told a press conference after distributing new year calendars at the central market here yesterday.
One thousand copies of calendar were out given out at the market by Democratic Action Party (DAP) Sibu.
Lau said the amount of grants given out to recipients differed whereby the maximum was RM5,000.
“Normally when we give out such grants, we require the recipients to report to us how they make use of it. Unfortunately so far, only 10 per cent of the reports had been received from the recipients.
“Of course some have just been given the grants which I understand. But for recipients who received the grants in August last year, they still have not submitted the report yet.
“I urge them to give me the reports so that for the following year when they apply for fund, we can continue to give them or else it will be hard for me to allocate fund to those associations because we do not know how they had used the money,” she said.
Lau added: “Some have actually used the money and put in fixed deposit which is not fair to others. So this year we will consider how to give out the fund because some other bodies are really in need of fund for urgent purposes,” she pointed out.
She explained her move to declare the utilisation of the government fund allocation to her was for transparency and accountability sake to let the rakyat know how the fund was utilised.
She also said as for her methods, she would ask the Prime Minister’s Department to bank the fund directly into the account of the recipients.
“This is because I do not want anything like the recent news where an assistant had asked for commission to happen,” Lau said.
She also challenged the Sarawak state government under Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) for their MPs who received more than RM1 million per year to declare how they used their allocation.
“I think the rakyat need to know how they actually give out their allocation. I haven’t see any of them do this before. I want to make this declaration because I want to be transparent and the people to trust us on how we actually use the government allocation.
“My way of distributing government allocation is not by handing over cheques because I think this is not my money and I don’t want to seek publicity on this because this is the rakyat’s money.
“Everything has proof because I use online transfer of fund to applicant bodies’ bank account which is faster and more efficient,” Lau said.
“For poor families and those without bank account, she would give out cash to assist them especially for the use of their children’s education,” she added.