No hope that price standardisation between East and West Malaysia will be achieved. Sabah will still bear higher prices for goods and higher living costs despite being the poorest state after Sarawak.
KOTA KINABALU: Sandakan MP Stephen Wong has welcomed the security initiatives for Sabah unveiled by Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak on Friday but otherwise has only brickbats for Budget 2015.
On the plus side, he was referring to the allocation for the Eastern Sabah Security Command (Esscom) which will rise from RM 75 million in the 2014 budget to RM 660 million in 2015.
Wong lamented the fact that the allocation for price standardisation has been reduced from RM 331 million in 2014 to RM 262 million for 2015.
“I see no hope that price standardisation between East and West Malaysia will be achieved,” he said. “Sadly, Sabah will still bear higher prices for goods and higher living costs despite being the poorest state after Sarawak.”
The National Cabotage Policy (NCP), he pointed out, continues to burden the people by not allowing Sabah to have direct shipping links with nearby countries.
He estimates that less than RM 3.5 billion or only 6.9% of the total RM 50.5 billion for development expenditure was allocated to Sabah.
“Sabah is still very far behind in terms of infrastructure and development,” he said in making the case for the state to have more funds from the Federal Government.
He conceded that he had been expecting better news for Sabah since the same party controlled Putrajaya and the Sabah Government.
The seven infrastructure projects announced by Najib, he complained, were all in Peninsular Malaysia. “The long-promised Libaran Road for Sandakan was not even mentioned in the budget speech.”
He saw little point in delving into the details on the rest of the Budget.
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