FZ.com, 20 February 2014
KAJANG
(Feb 20): The number of Kajang Municipal Council (MPKj) members
appointed for this session has dropped by at least six, where only 18
letters of acceptance were sent out.
MPKj had 24 councillors in the last session.
An officer in MPKj said many of the soon-to-be-councillors have not
returned the letter of acceptance yet and that council president Datuk
Hassan Nawawi has not given the date for the swearing in ceremony.
“Well, with the (March 23) Kajang by-election at our doorstep we will
conduct the swearing in ceremony a little bit later than the other
councils in Selangor. However, we will not conduct it after the
by-election, it will definitely be before the by-election.
“We have not received the date from our council president yet and
there are some appointed council members who have not returned the
acceptance form. I don’t know how many will accept and how many will
reject,” the officer told fz.com.
When asked how many new council members were appointed and whether or
not only six council members from the old team were dropped, the
officer only pointed out that since the swearing-in ceremony has not
taken place, there is no way anyone can confirm on the new line up.
“I can’t answer that. I think there are more than six that have been
dropped from the old line-up but for a confirmation, we need to wait
till the swearing-in ceremony,” said the officer, who requested
anonymity.
The move where many old council members were dropped and only 18
letters of acceptance were sent out is not a surprise due to the
standoff between Hassan and his entire council during the last session
as reported by fz.com.
The standoff took place when the councillors walked out of a full
board meeting in disagreement with Hassan on Aug 24 and moved a motion
of no confidence against their president and claimed “abuse of power,
non-co-operative civil servants and dubious management procedures” as
the reasons for their loss of faith.
It has been confirmed that Hasan had unlawfully given a RM10 million discount to developers, causing ratepayers to lose revenue.
However, Hassan held a trump card in his hand with a dossier holding
evidence that at least 10 councillors had sought or benefitted from
council contracts.
Kajang was left without a full board meeting up till Dec 13 last
year, after Menteri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim told everyone to get
back to work.
However, the meeting convened only to confirm that the Menteri Besar’s office was still needed to solve the impasse.
Whether or not 18 councillors for Kajang is enough to serve the
population remains to be seen, especially since one of the issues
plaguing the satellite town was MPKj’s service.
PKR candidate and de facto Opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim
has identified that one of the issues that Kajang folks are unhappy
about is MPKj’s services.
In a press conference on Tuesday, Anwar highlighted that Kajang still
faces a lot of local issues where MPKj’s services or lack of it is one
of the seven major issues problem he wants to tackle.
The seven major concerns lies with crime and safety (42%) and traffic
congestions (38%). This is followed by cleanliness and garbage
collection (30%), social ills (20%), welfare for the poor (16%), petty
traders and hawkers (12%) and Kajang Municipal Council services (11%).
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