Go to the ground, inspect quit rent cases yourself, Chow told

FMT:

Go to the ground, inspect quit rent cases yourself, Chow told

Bagan MP Lim Guan Eng says the Penang chief minister should not rely solely on data from land and mines officers and aides

Bagan MP Lim Guan Eng (left) said Penang chief minister Chow Kon Yeow declined his invitation to visit the Bola-Bola flats in Bagan, where residents were upset over the increase in their quit rent from RM3,676 to RM22,120.

GEORGE TOWN: Lim Guan Eng has told Penang chief minister Chow Kon Yeow to personally inspect complaints over Penang’s revised quit rent rates instead of relying only on feedback from land and mines officers and aides.

In a statement today, the Bagan MP said Chow should understand the actual situation faced by affected landowners, and that the growing number of appeals showed that public anger over the issue was real.

Lim said the number of appeals, which rose from about 300 on March 4 to over 2,000, could continue climbing until the April 30 deadline for quit rent payments.


He said Chow had declined his invitation to visit the Bola-Bola flats in Bagan, where residents were upset over what he said was a fivefold increase in quit rent from RM3,676 to RM22,120.

Lim said that even in Chow’s parliamentary constituency of Batu Kawan, a village house lot in Kampung Sekolah, Juru, saw its quit rent jump from RM12 to RM34,118.


Chow earlier said the land was not used solely as a kampung house lot but also for timber and pallet storage and as a wood workshop.

He said several landowners who publicly criticised the revised quit rent rates had left out key details such as lot size and the actual business or industrial use of their land.

However, Lim said Chow had openly admitted that the new quit rent calculation system had caused increases ranging from hundreds- to thousands-fold.

He asked how such steep hikes could be justified when they were not mentioned in Pakatan Harapan’s election manifesto for Penang in 2023.


Lim also said the explanation that the quit rent structure had not been reviewed since 1994 did not justify sudden and excessive increases.

He said the fee for statutory declarations was raised to RM10 from RM4 in January 2023 after nearly 30 years, marking an increase of about two-and-a-half times.

Lim also cited the case of SJKC Li Hwa in Butterworth, where quit rent rose from RM2 to RM8,074.

He said repeated corrections and reductions in some assessments, including cases where amounts were reduced by as much as 90%, showed that the current system was flawed and unfair.


He urged the Penang government to review the entire quit rent calculation method and replace it with a system that was logical, fair and reasonable.

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For frigging sake Guanee, do your "advising" in private - don't do it openly in private with undeniably the aim of humiliating Chow.

Your overt hostility to your successor is way too notorious for Penangites to remain calm and silent. Please respect Chow - he's the CM, not you nor your sister.