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KOTA KINABALU: The High Court here on Wednesday granted leave for former Chief Minister Datuk Yong Teck Lee and Tawau businessman Pang Thou Chung to challenge the validity of the re-appointment of Datuk Amarjit Singh as the Director of the Sabah Water Department.

Yong and Pang had, on Jan 28, initiated legal action against the Sabah State Secretary, the Sabah Public Service Commission, the Sabah State Government and Amarjit to seek a judicial review of the illegal re-appointment of the Director.

On Oct 9, 2019, the KK High Court had declared that the initial appointment of Amarjit as Director of the Water Department was illegal as the appointment had contravened Section 3 of the Sabah Water Enactment 2003, which stipulated that the Director shall be appointed from among the Sabah public service.

“In order to try to circumvent the Enactment, the Sabah Government had issued a letter dated Oct 30, 2019 to appoint Amarjit as “Technical Adviser” to the State Secretary. This letter was backdated to be effective on Oct 11, 2019,” disclosed Yong.

“And then, on Nov 1, 2019, the Government transferred Amarjit to the Water Department as Director. This transfer was again backdated to be effective Oct 14, 2019. 

“This entire exercise was to subvert the KK High Court judgement of Oct 9, 2019,” said Yong in a statement, Wednesday.