Open letter to the Pakatan Harapan's avowed rule-of-law — Chow Siew Cheong

MAY 11 — Yang Amat Berhormat Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Yang Amat Berhormat Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail.

Congratulations to Pakatan Harapan's success in the 14th General Elections and thank you for the assurance of forming a new government based on the rule of law (which I have abbreviated to “PHaRoL”).

While you and your colleagues are in consultation to fill the federal ministries with the MPs duly elected by the rakyat banking on the hope that you propagated and setting goals for the first 100 days and/or first year, I wish to lobby for the establishment of a pro tem Office of Ombudsman for Federal/State/Local Government matters.

During my 40-year service as a municipal employee, I have noted some matters which have been unfair to the rakyat but was prevented to highlight for correction by the threat of General Orders (Perintah Am) usually delivered verbally to me.

Some of the injustice needs to be corrected with the gazette of new guidelines and regulations while the rest could be made right via existing legislation.

A case in point is the provision under Section 144 of the Local Government Act, 1976 (LGA) for correction of entries in the Valuation List caused by oversight, mistake and fraud ...which affects most of the 90-odd local authorities nationwide.

Overt errors such as the erroneous assessment of low cost flats as "medium cost apartments" mean extra burden for ratepayers in the form of increases in Cukai Pintu/Kadar/Taksiran as well as Indah Water Konsortium (IWK) sewerage rates.

I observed that IWK imposes RM8 and RM2 as monthly charges for medium and low cost housing respectively.

Section 137(3) of the LGA provides for a revaluation every five years but some local authorities have failed to carry out a revaluation exercise for more than 15 years.

Some state/local authorities may have been advised by their valuation departments to defer correction of errors to be made simultaneously with a revaluation under Section 137(3)... obviously in blatant disregard of Section 144.

Consequently, the RM6 difference in IWK sewerage rates per month translates into RM72 per annum or RM1,080 for 15 years.

Since sewerage rates for non-low cost housing attracts 6 per cent GST, the owners of low cost flats under erroneous assessments bears the extra burden of a generally perceived oppressive tax.

The eventual abolition of GST as promised by your election manifesto and the numerous sub-sales/transfers of low cost homes will made refunds of IWK charges as well as GST very onerous for the agencies involved unless the issue of erroneous assessments in the valuation list is addressed SOONEST under Section 144 rather than under Section 137(3).

These are overt errors which can be corrected expeditiously.

Covert errors are more complex and may smack of corruption and money laundering, thus require action by investigative and custodial government agencies.

It would appear that the people who volunteered their services to research for the NGOs to support the change in government can assist PHaRoL to tweak improvements to good governance for the benefit of the rakyat. They also serve as a check and balance.

In this connection, may I propose the individuals behind Bersih, Ideas, Invoke and like-minded NGOs to help set up the Office of Ombudsman.

Herewith, I declare that I am not a member of any of the abovementioned NGOs nor of any political party.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.