SHAH ALAM, 15 Oct: The state government is prepared to consider ways to alleviate the burden of the people who have to face various increases in prices of goods, including the toll rate effective today.
The Chief Minister, Mohamed Azmin Ali, said that the state government also proposed for the federal government to use the revenue collected from the goods and services tax (GST) to pay the compensation to the highway concessionaires.
“We have to stick with our stance to ease the burden of the people and will see to what extent the state government is able to do regarding this issue. At first, we have to reject it, object (the toll hike) and then look at other options on how we can lighten the people’s burden.
“We have suggested with MTES that the federal government can use the revenue collected from the GST to finance the compensation payment to concessionaires.
“We were informed that the revenue collected from the GST is a large sum, over RM6 billion, as announced. Why not use this GST revenue to ease the people’s burden instead of taking the opportunity to continue to pressure the people, especially road users,” he said.
He said this after chairing the Selangor Economic Action (MTES) Meeting at the State Government Secretary’s building (SUK) today.
He said that the Selangor State Development Corporation (PKNS) holds 30 percent in Kesas Holdings Sdn Bhd and Kumpulan Perangsang Selangor (KPS) holds 20 percent in Sprint Sdn Bhd.
“This increase is outside our jurisdiction because we are only minority shareholders. We do not have the final say, but we will use representatives to object to the hike, whether we manage to convince the Board of Directors or not, it will only be decided in the next meeting,” he said.
NS
