Tiong (second right) listens to a longhouse resident complaining about high price of essential items.
BINTULU (April 29): Bintulu MP Datuk Seri Tiong King Sing has taken the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs to task over the alleged pricey essential goods in the rural areas.
According to him, the government had allocated more than RM100 million a year to provide transport allowances and quotas for essential supplies in the rural areas, such as rice, cooking oil, flour, sugar, gas tanks and fuel.
However, during his visit to several longhouses in the interior recently, he said many residents complained about the price hike of those essential items.
Tiong said the people were still struggling to survive due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and now with the high cost of living, they were still struggling.
“Where are all the subsidies provided by the government and why are there still longhouse residents having to pay up to two or three times more for their purchases,” he said in a Facebook post yesterday.
He said to standardise the price of essential goods in rural areas, the government ought to help in terms of logistics and transportation.
“However, the incident of subsidies and related provisions not reaching the people is not new.
“It (problem) has always been there since I was first elected the people’s representative five terms ago,” said Tiong, and questioned the authorities if they were really doing their job.
He also called on the Malaysian Anti Corruption Commission (MACC) to investigate the matter.
“Are Sarawak’s rural areas too far away from government administrative centres, and surrounded by high mountains that the relevant authorities could not reach?
“The fact is, complaints have been made repeatedly, indicating that the officers concerned do not take things seriously,” he said.
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