Speech by DAP Secretary-General and Member of Parliament for Bandar Melaka, Mr. Lim Kit Siang, when addressing members and supporters at Bukit Rambai on Sunday, 10th September 1972 at 10 a.m.
DAP calls for a Master Plan to bring about the economic upliftment of Malacca State
For the last 15 years that Malacca State was under the Alliance rule, Malacca had declined economically year by year.
There is no vision or foresight on the part of the Alliance leaders and government planners to forestall the economic decline of Malacca, or to take concrete steps to stop his decline.
This is a condemnation of the inefficiency, ineffectiveness and importance of the Alliance government and leaders of Malacca for the past 15 years. All that the Alliance leaders were interested about is how to chart the advancement of their personal wealth, fortune, position or power.
The Alliance Government had failed the people of Malacca. It has not only failed to check the economic decline of Malacca, it has added to the hardships of the people of Malacca.
In the last general elections, the Alliance promised the people and state of Malacca a port. All that we have a got is a second-class jetty.
This is the worth of Alliance promises.
The Alliance promised more industries to create jobs for the school-leavers who leave the Malacca schools every year; but the jobs are still in the planning stage, without any realization, and the unemployment among Malacca youths has become a very acute problem. So much so, that large number of youths from Malacca town and surrounding new villages had to leave their families to find jobs overseas – in Singapore, Indonesia, Sabah and Sarawak. This is another condemnation of the failure of the economic policy of the Malacca Alliance.
The Malacca Alliance can only impose hardships. A good example is the unjustified and arbitrary increase in the water rates, which hit the poor the hardest.
Next month, on the 3rd, the Malacca State Assembly is meeting, and I hope the new Chief Minister, Incik Ganie Ali, will make use of the occasion to announce a master plan to chart the economic development and upliftment of the Malacca state in terms of job creations from industries, tourist promotion, building of a real port and not a second-class jetty, the modernization of the Malacca airport; and concrete plans to help the have-nots of all races in Malacca, particularly the poor farmers, the new villagers as regards the granting of land titles at cheap, easy-to-pay installments; estate labourers; hawkers; etc.
If the new Chief Minister has no new master plan to chart the economic upliftment of Malacca, with special emphasis on the assistance of the poor in the kampongs, new villages, estates and towns, then the people of Malacca can expect another period of Alliance incompetence, maladministration and irresponsibility to the welfare of the poor.
I call on the new Chief Minister to take the first measure to show that he really cares for the poor. Cancel the increase in water rates!