The KL Members of Parliament were given a briefing on City Hall’s 2010 Budget last Friday, 4th of December 2010. The surplus budget, thanks to federal government assistance which formed a whopping 67.6% of the development expenditure also included a one off payment amounting to RM 451.3 million.
There is no rationale for distribution of development expenditure according to constituencies, as DBKL is not answerable to parliament. One example is the number of public housing in Bandar Tun Razak, Lembah Pantai and Bukit Bintang -11, 3 and 5 respectively. You would the budget would follow the number of housing – but BTR gets RM 79.2 mn, Lembah Pantai 26 mn and Bukit Bintang a staggering RM 240 mn.
As such, to properly judge, the huge RM2.1 billion budget (even higher than that for Selangor and Penang), has to be tabled to parliament, to constituents, to MPs! This need remains even more necessary with the disclosure that not even the Auditor General has the right to review the enormous budget. Such huge powers of discretion is given to DBKL to freely use taxpayers’ money with no semblance of proper check and balance save for some episodes of internal auditing.
We were also informed after a query that an item under maintenance costing RM250 million (for 2010) has been transferred from the FT Ministry to DBKL in the form of the said amount. Hence for 2010, the ‘maintenance’ item under FT Ministry is effectively ‘erased’ by the higher ups. How then do we monitor and compare past and present implementation of maintenance works in our cities.
And finally, how do we judge the feasibility of projects chosen by the Mayor to improve services. This includes the OSC online development planning, which will speed up the process of accepting development plans -online -anytime, anywhere with expected approval time to be shortened to even just 3 months. As it stands, residents face tumultuous challenges in objecting against any development (especially those above 30 degrees) -they will not get any free lunches as the OSC only serves the needs of developers not residents. The usual lengthy process of residential objections with very ‘little one can do to stop the development’ remains, with disclosure from the mayor that those who go to the courts will be sidelined. I brought up the cases of Bukit Gasing, Medang Kapas and Medang Serai only to hear that Ekram’s decision is final, and even though the residents might decide to challenge it, it is unlikely to be cancelled save only if Ekram says so.
The tabling of the DBKL budget smacks of non transparency, lack of fiscal discipline and only aggravates the call for the council to be answerable to taxpayers yet again -not only by way of budget tabling, but also in the choice of its top officials.
Nurul Izzah Anwar
Lembah Pantai, M.P.
