Water and electricity for all in 2 years: DPM

STAR, 23 December 2010

LIMBANG: The Federal Government has set itself a target of two years to resolve the electricity and water supply problems facing the people.

Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said these two basic amenities must be supplied to all Malaysians regardless of where they were living.

“The extension of electricity and water supply has been included in the National Key Result Areas (NKRAs) and we have set a target of two years to provide the people with these amenities,” he said when addressing people from all races during a dinner here on Wednesday night.

Confident of achieving the target, he said the Government had already set things rolling.
“We are no longer talking about plans. We are not at the planning stage any more. We are already implementing programmes on the ground to get these accomplished.

“Provision of these basic amenities to all people, especially outside the cities and towns, is vital. It is as important as the construction of road-links for all rural regions, which is also under the NKRAs,’’ he added.
On Opposition propaganda, Muhyiddin urged the people not to believe their accusations that the Federal Government had given too much attention to only certain places, like Kuala Lumpur.

While he acknowledged that the Government had to spend huge sums to tackle public problems in huge cities like Kuala Lumpur, it had not neglected the rural people.

“In Kuala Lumpur, we have to spend billions to build facilities like the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) just to resolve the massive traffic jams daily.

“However, we are also at the same time, focusing on overcoming the very basic problems like absence of electricity and water in rural settlements such as in Sarawak,’’ he added.

Muhyiddin said the Government’s plan to create a high-income society was aimed at the city and town people alone.

“We want to raise the per capita income to US$15,000 (RM46,700) by 2020, from the present US$8,000 (RM24,900). This target is achievable even for the rural people if the Government’s transformation programmes can succeed,’’ he said.

He said the Government had rolled out 131 big projects nationwide to transform the economic, industrial and services sectors and a big portion of these are for rural areas.