Pay the cost or renew MyGaz distribution licence, Parliament Deputy Speaker tells S’wak govt

SIBU (Dec 13): Parliament Deputy Speaker Alice Lau calls for the Sarawak government to consider absorbing the cost of Petros’ gas cylinders or to renew the distribution licence for MyGaz.

Since the termination of MyGaz’s distribution licence in November, no one from the state government had tried to facilitate in the transition period, leaving dealers to be at loss of their next move, Alice said at a press conference here.

“The issue right now is not on whether there are enough (Petros’) red gas cylinders, but rather on the dealers who are faced with difficulties in having to bear the cost to change their existing yellow gas cylinders to Petros’ red-coloured gas cylinders.

“The dealers have to absorb the cost of about RM200 during this transition period,” she pointed out.

“I think it is not fair to ask the dealers to bear the cost when the government wants to monopolise the business,” she stressed, adding that it defeated the government’s slogan of ‘for Sarawakians and to benefit Sarawakians’.

“The problem already occurs but no one is solving it. Since November until now, there are a lot of complaints in the market already.

“When you ask the dealers or the distributors to absorb the cost, who wants to take the loss?” she reasoned.

Lau, who is Lanang MP, said she could not put the blame on the distributors as they would suffer a great loss if they decided to pay for the exchange cost.

“No one is solving this problem during this transition period.  The government is not doing anything, except for the so-called premium RM40 for the dealers which I do not think helps at all,” she said.

The state government, she reiterated, has to be fair to the dealers instead of asking them to bear the cost on their own.

“Members of the public are also badly affected as they could not exchange the yellow gas cylinder with the red-coloured gas cylinder as no dealer would accept the yellow gas cylinder.

Due to this problem, she said her service centre had decided to stop the distribution of subsidised gas cylinder programme this Dec 16.

“And I cannot tell people that I can only accept red or green gas cylinders because I have to be fair to everybody,” she said, while calling for all five assemblymen in Sibu to come up with a solution within three days.

“This is gas issue, autonomy issue under the Sarawak government. I seriously do not know how to deal with it. The only solution is for Sarawak government to absorb the cost,” she said.

The federal government had no powers or authority on the issue and for Putrajaya to absorb the cost would be costly, she added.