Kota Kinabalu: A group of Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) Youth members handed over a memorandum protesting against the new electricity tariff by Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd (SESB) under tight police supervision, Friday.The group led by a SAPP Youth Executive Council member, Md Nazib Maidan Dalli, earlier planned to stage a peaceful demonstration in front of the Karamunsing Shopping Complex, fronting SESB's headquarters.
However, after speaking to City Police Chief ACP Ahmad Sofi Zakaria and 50 police personnel including the Light Strike Force team, they were only able to hand over the memorandum signed by SAPP Youth Chief, Edward Dagul to SESB Security Manager, Azmi Azman. The memorandum was addressed to SESB chairman Tan Sri Leo Moggie.
Police waited at the Wisma SESB compound since 9am after getting word that a group of SAPP Youth members was coming to hold a peaceful demonstration to object to the tariff increase at 10am.
Traffic was also diverted from entering Kompleks Karamunsing.
The group arrived at 11am. Police confiscated the placards that the SAPP Youth members planned to hold up upon arriving.
In the memorandum, SAPP Youth wing contended that the new tariff would impact every person, some directly as consumers and some indirectly when the costs of living and costs of economic production shoot up.
"Your full page advertisement in newspapers July 10 to justify the new tariff is misleading and mischievous. The advert fails to convince the people in the same way that your newspaper advertisements in the last few years on the proposed coal power plants have also failed to convince the people," said the movement.
"We call on SESB to be fair to the people of Sabah, to provide reliable electric supply at reasonable costs. We call on SESB to use more of our own natural gas for power generation, to cut wastage and corruption and to improve efficiency.
"We do not agree that SESB has sufficient justification to increase the electricity tariff," it said.
Speaking to reporters later, Ahmad Sofi said upon being informed of the planned demonstration, police immediately blocked the main access road to SESB building to avoid any untoward incident.
"I personally talked to them and advised them to disperse after they handed over the memorandum to SESB ... no one was arrested in the incident," he said.
"My advice was please avoid gathering in a large numbers as a means to solve whatever problem. I hope they will try to use another channel like meeting with the other party to discuss and find solutions," he said.
Electricity rates in Sabah and Labuan went up by 15 per cent from Friday but Energy, Green Technology and Water Minister Datuk Peter Chin Fah Kui said the increase would only affect consumers whose average monthly bills exceed RM77 and about 275,000 households would not be affected by the new rates.
Meanwhile, SESB Managing Director, Datuk Baharin Din who happened to be in Wisma SESB for the Power Efficiency Inter-Schools Debate for Kota Kinabalu final and prize presentation that was officiated by Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Masidi Manjun when met said:
"We will look into the memorandum but in general when the Government decided to restructure the tariff everything was taken into consideration".
He said it was done to correct the imbalance in the structure of electricity tariff in Sabah that was last revised 26 years ago.
He added that the tariff restructuring would also benefit the people in general.
In this respect, he said SESB had set up a toll-free hotline dubbed Hotline Tariff at 1800-881135 for anyone seeking explanation on the new electricity tariff.
