Kota Kinabalu: The State Government has been urged to deny the authenticity of the document bearing the names of several Semenanjung opposition leaders barred from entering Sabah that went viral in the social media.Sri Tanjung Assemblyman, Chan Foong Hin said he appreciated the government's effort to set up the Esscom and Esszone following the Lahad Datu and Semporna incident.
The State's security should be protected by boosting the defensive power but not by preventing opposition MPs from entering Sabah, he said.
"This has got nothing to do with immigration power but abuse of power," he said when participating in the debate on the State Government's policy speech on Wednesday.
"I challenge the State Government that there will be no more barring of MPs into Sabah without any particular reason," he said.
Chan also urged the State Government to consider Tawau, as the "third city" in Sabah for the development of the manufacturing industry.
At the moment, the POIC was only located in Sandakan and Lahad Datu while the KKIP and SOGIP are located in the West Coast of the State and nothing was being done in Tawau, he said.
He said Tawau was lagging behind in terms of basic infrastructure such as electricity, water and sub-standard roads as well as problematic ports.
At least, Tawau's infrastructure should be at par with Sandakan and not compared with the interior, he said.
Chan also criticised the Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd's (SESB) performance, which right after the 13th General Election was over began load shedding that had continued until today.
"Everyday me and my assistant are receiving complaints about power outage from the people in Tawau," he said.
Towards this end, Chan asked the reason for the Kubota Power Station still not being fully operational to boost power supply in Tawau to 124MW.
The daily power demand for Tawau at the moment was about 90MW.
However, Minister of Infrastructure Development Datuk Raymond Tan pointed out that it was the opposition who objected to the power station project in Kubota in the first place.
"The opposition is not objecting to the project per se but we object if the project is not done according to the law requirements," answered Chan.
He also urged the Local Government and Housing Minister to go down the ground and look at the Pasar Tanjong Tawau, which was faced with flooding and bad facilities.
Chan called on the State Government to request for an increase of the oil royalty to at least 20 per cent or the same amount in the form of special grant from the Federal Government.
"This is to increase the State Government's revenue to RM7.2 billion as promised in the BN manifesto," he said.
