By Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Kota Melaka, Lim Kit Siang, in Petaling Jaya on Sunday, July 6, 1986:
Ten DAP MPs to ask for a dialogue with the new EPF Chairman and the EPF Board and EPF Investment Panel during Parliamentary meeting next week on workers’ worries about EPF investments and management decisions.
The ten DAP MPs, dissatisfied with the dxplanations given by the new EPF Chairman, Tan Sri Zain Azraai, last week about EPF investments, and in particular with regard to the EPF’s $10 million loss in disposing shares to the $2 government company, MAKUWASA SECURUTIES SDN.BHD., is asking for a dialogue with the EPF Chairman, EPF Board and EPF Investment Panel.
DAP Deputy Secretary-General and Mp of r Kuala Lumpur Bandar, Sdr.Lee Lam Thye, has been charged with making contact with the EPF Chairman to arrange for such a meeting with the ten DAP MPs, namely: Dr.Chen Man Hin ( Seremban ) Lee Lam Thye ( KL Bandar ) Dr.Tan Seng Qiaw ( Kepong ) Chan Kok Kit (Sungai Besi ) Karpal Singh ( Jelutong ) Gooi Hock Seng ( Bukit Bendera ) Lim Kit Siang ( Kota Melaka ) Fung Ket Wing ( Sandakan ) Sim Kwang Yang ( Bandar Kuching ) and Ling Sie Ming ( Sibu )
The ten Dap MPs will ask the new EPF Chairman, the EPF Board and the EPF Investment Panel to clarify the following matters:
Tan Sri Zian said that the MAKUWASA arrangement and exercise where the EPF disposed of 13 share counters to MAKUWASA was ‘very much to the benefit of EPF’. DAP MPs and the five million of EPF contributors cannot understand how losing $10 million profit is beneficial to EPF.
Why was the MAKUWASA arrangement and exercise conducted in such great secrecy that even the EPF Board was kept ‘in the dark’, with EPF Board members as ignorant about the MAKUWSA exercise as the ordinary workers. Isn’t this a breach of the EPF Act 1951 making the whole transactions of doubtful legality?
Under what provisions of EPF Act 1951 is the EPF management authorised to act as broker, holding agent or finance institution for other companies in share dealings, as highlighted in the MAKUWASA affair?
DAP Mps will demand for a full list of the shares investments and dealings since June 1984, i.e. the time Daim Zainuddin took over as Finance Minister in the country.
What authority has the EPF Management, without consent or knowledge of the EPF Board, to con tribute finds amounting to $100 million to a high-powered and highly-secretive Investment Co-ordinating Committee (ICC) in the Minister of Finance to try boost up the stck marketm which collapsed after Tan Konn Swan-Pan El scandal.
DAP MPs will also want a full list of the shares investment and transactions handled by the Investment Co-ordinating Committee using mainly EPF and SOCOS finds, since the establishment of this Committee, and the full identity of CIC members and operatives.
Tan Sri Zain Azraai said that as of May 1986, EPF lost $14 million from its investment; while the Finance Minister, Daim Zainuddin , told Parliament in March that EPF, as at end of 1985, lost $36.8 million from its shares investments. How did the EPF’s investment losses jumped by over $100 million in five months?
Is the EPF, its Board and Investment Panel asking MAKUWASA to return the $10 million to EPF, as this money legally and rightly belong to the five million EPF contributors??
Why did the EPF allow the formation of five companies using the name of MAKEWASA, namely
1. MAKUWASA Securities Sdn.Bhd.
2. MAKUWASA Development (Sabah) Sdn.Bhd.
3. MAKUWASA Jaya Development Sdn.Bhd.
4. MAKUWASA Palm Oil Sdn.Bhd.
5. MAKUWASA Plantation (Sabah) Sdn.Bhd. ,
All $2 companies using the same address and same two share-holder directors of one dollar share each. KUWASA is the EPF in short form in Bahasa Malaysia, and clearly the use of MAKUWASA is a passing off that such companies is related to the EPF .Or were the MAKUWASA companies establishing originally as EPF subsidiaries, but somewhere along the line, someone decided that they should be separate and different entities?
Why the workers have no representatives on the EPF Investment Panel.Is this the dicision of the EPF Board or the Ministry of Finance, Has the EPF Management forgotten that they are trustees of the workers in the management of the EPF finds, and not owners who could dispose of the funds as and how they like, wothout having to account to anyone?
These question will be raised by the ten DAP MPs when they meet the new EPF Chairman, the EPF Board Investment Panel.
DAP welcome Tun Hussein Onn’s call for amendment to UUCA
I fully welcome the call by former Prime Minister, Tun Hussein Onn, for relaxation of the UUCA, because of changing times. The Universities and University Colleges should be repealed altogether, to be replaed by a University Charter which will confer autonomy status to the local universities.
The restrictive and repressive features of the UUCA, putting restraints and constraints on university students, lecturers and academicians from free student activity and academic freedom, should be completely dismantled.
Our universities must be centres of learning and social inquiry instead of factories to produce graduates who immediately become the latest unemployed.
Some universities are being run as if they are administering high schools or colleges, treating academicians and students with utter contempt, as if undergraduates are schoolboys and girls, and lecturers high school teachers. The worst example of course is the University Sains Malaysia.
The role of universities to nation building cannot be subject to the whims and fancies of the ruling parties of the day. They must be fully autonomous and subject to a Universities Commission which us answerable directly to Parliament, and not to any particular Minister of Education.
There should be a complete overhaul of legislation governing universities. This should be accompanied by an overhaul of the university administrations in the country, and Vice Chancellors who are not hampering the growth of healthy academic traditions of excellence and free inquiry should be replaced, especially certain Vice Chancellors who want to introduce the feudal spirit in our universities.