GEORGE TOWN, Jan 4 — Penang Gerakan today demanded that Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng apologise to Penangites for selling 6.4 acres of prime in land Peel Avenue.
Penang Gerakan Acting Youth Chairman Jason Loo said Lim must apologise especially to the residents around Peel Avenue for selling the land to Island Hospital for the Island Medical City project.
He claimed that Lim had sent him three legal notices in June and July last year demanding that he retract his statements on the Island Medical City project but after that, did not follow up with a legal suit.
“Until today, I don’t see him suing me at all which means my statements about the project are true,” he said.
He based this “logic” on Lim’s recent statement where he reportedly said that PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang wanting an all Malay-Muslim Cabinet must be true because Hadi did not sue the media over those reports.
“So I want to thank him for confirming my statements were true and accurate,” he said in a press conference at Komtar today before handing over a Thank You card to Lim’s office.
Loo had repeatedly questioned the sale of the Peel Avenue land to Island Hospital without an open tender.
He claimed that the sale of the land, through Chief Minister Incorporated, was a “one-man decision”.
“This land belongs to the people of Penang and the DAP state government can’t simply sell off our lands,” he said.
The Island Medical City project is part of an expansion project by Island Hospital to extend its current 300-bed capacity to 600-bed.
The hospital signed a RM156 million lease for a 2.76 ha (6.83 acres) piece of land along Peel Avenue near its current site in December 2016.
However, the hospital has two years to obtain a license from the Health Ministry to build the additional medical facility.
Along with the expansion, the development plans for the site included the construction of a 33-storey hotel with 440 rooms which included a six-storey carpark space.
