Why is Ong Tee Keat afraid of a Selangor Exco member sitting on the PKA Board and insist on having his own appointee representing Selangor State Govt?

By Lim Kit Siang,

My three questions (No.37 to No. 39 on the 13th day in the current series) to Transport Minister Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat on the RM12.5 billion Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) scandal today are:

1. In his blog from Beijing on 3rd June 2009, Ong wrote:

“At this very moment, professional experts and entrepreneurs have been roped in to provide their views and expertise on how to bring PKFZ back on track for which it was originally conceived.

“ We are not sitting still and playing rhetoric. In the weeks and months ahead, my Ministry and PKA will put in place a series of action plans to lessen the pain on taxpayers.”

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) submitted its “position review” report of the Port Klang Free Zone (PFKZ) on 3rd February 2009, which means Ong had more than four months to digest it.

Can he explain what he had done in these four months apart from “sitting still and playing rhetoric” to “put in place a series of action plans to lessen the pain on taxpayers” with regard to the RM12.5 billion PKFZ scandal and why he needs four months just to announce a blue-ribboned Task Force to make some more studies in the next two months to make recommendations “for follow-up actions” to be taken by the Government? Isn’t this a colossal waste of four months after the PwC report on PKFZ?

2. In the same blog, Ong had written:

“PKA has been requested to submit fourteen (14) copies of the report as well as the appendices to members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), and it will do so as soon as possible.”

At yesterday’s meeting of the PAC, which was attended by the PKA Chairman Datuk Lee Hwa Beng, PAC members were informed that the 14 sets of appendices were only available for them during PAC meetings and not meant for them to take back for detailed study.

What is Ong afraid of that he is prepared to commit the parliamentary contempt of imposing such a ridiculous condition restricting access of the PwC Report appendices to PAC members which make a total mockery of his ministerial responsibility and accountability to Parliament?

3. Why is Ong so afraid of a Selangor Exco member sitting on the Port Klang Authority (PKA) Board that he insists on having his own appointee representing Selangor State Government instead of the Selangor State Government’s choice?

Selangor Mentri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim’s proposal to have a state exco member sitting on the PKA Board met with immediate and quite violent opposition from the PKA Chairman Datuk Lee Hwa Beng, who claimed:

“For me, there is no need for an exco to be in PKA. I’m an accountant by profession, I was a chairman of a public-listed logistic company before I resigned. I know the business well.”

Lee insisted that the Selangor state government’s representative on the PKA Board should continue to be a civil servant and not a State exco member.

Why is Lee reeking with fear at the very suggestion of a Selangor State exco member sitting on PKA Board?

Since Ong had been micro-managing every step, decision and pronouncement of the PKA Chairman, as evident in the past two weeks, one cannot be very wrong in assuming that Lee was speaking on behalf of the Minister in responding to Khalid’s proposal.

This is most extraordinary, where the Transport Minister, who is the appointing authority for the PKA Board members, wants to overrule the Selangor State Government as who should be the PKA Board member representing the Selangor State Government.

Why is Ong so afraid to allow a Selangor State Exco member to sit on the PKA Board?

Why is Ong vetoing the Selangor State Exco as to who should represent the Selangor State Government on the PKA Board?