PENANG assemblymen and MPs who missed the swearing-in ceremony of the Penang governor last month can appeal to the Chief Minister’s Office for their “outright grant”.

The money is being held back instead of being deposited into the reps’ accounts, said Deputy Chief Minister I Mohd Rashid Hasnon said.

“The funds have to be requested from the CM’s office through an appeal.

“Only assemblymen who missed the ceremony because they were overseas on official business or had special permission, are exempted from this (attending),” he said in a statement today.

Several PKR, DAP and Umno assemblymen missed the swearing-in of the governor on April 29.

PKR Penanti rep Dr Norlela Ariffin recently complained on Facebook about her funds being frozen because she had missed the ceremony, which she said was because the date had clashed with the PKR  state convention.

Rashid said the matter was not as she had claimed, but the affected reps still needed to send appeal to the CM’s office for the funds to be released.

Assemblymen each receive RM200,000 as “outright grant” a year. The sum is given out in four payments of RM50,000 every quarter.

“This is also just the outright funds for the third quarter. We are not holding back budget allocations,” he said.

Rashid said Penang PKR had also written to Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng seeking exemption for its assemblymen, who missed the  swearing-in ceremony to attend the party convention.

“This is just a misunderstanding at party programme level. It also has to do with the state government’s emphasis on the importance of its reps’ presence at a state event.

“But we hope we can settle this issue amicably and correct the misunderstanding so we can get on with developing Penang.” – May 18, 2017.