No discrimination over Kelantan petroleum royalty issue, says Husam

BACHOK, Oct 12 — The federal government does not discriminate against the Kelantan state government over the payment of petroleum royalty, state Pakatan Harapan chairman Senator Datuk Husam Musa said.

He said the Kelantan state government needed to scrutinise the reason why the federal government had not paid the petroleum royalty to the state when the full payment had been made to Terengganu.

“There may be certain technical problems if the Kelantan petroleum royalty has not been paid, it needs to be studied. The Kelantan state government must self-reflect the reason for non-payment whilst it was fully paid to Terengganu.

“The royalty payment would not have been made to Terengganu if the federal government practises discrimination because the amount is bigger,’’ he said.

He said this to reporters when asked to comment on the Kelantan petroleum royalty claim which had not been met by the federal government here today.

PAS deputy president Datuk Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man was previously reported as saying that the federal government no longer had any excuse for not giving the royalty to Kelantan since the latter had fulfilled its requests, including withdrawing the court’s case.

Subsequently, he said, PAS hoped that Kelantan would receive oil royalties through Budget 2020 which was tabled yesterday, however it was not mentioned during the tabling.

In the meantime, commenting on the Kelantan State Assembly meeting this week, Husam said that the state had adequate funds to be spent because most of the allocations had been channelled by the federal government.

He said the government under PH channelled directly all allocations to the state governments including the provision of funds for roads which was 100 per cent managed by the Malaysian Road Record Information System (Marris) in Kelantan.

Only, he said that the Kelantan state government had been asked to provide in detail on the status of the carbon credit project which was entered in the Kelantan budget in 2013 involving a one million hectare forest.

‘‘The people of Kelantan would want to know how much payment was received from the one million hectares for the carbon credit project,’’ he said. — Bernama