SARAWAK PKR vice-president See Chee How said Sarawak United People’s Party’s (SUPP) proposal to make all Sarawakians shareholders in state oil company Petroleum Sarawak Berhad (Petros) is “a bad idea”.

See, the Batu Lintang assemblyman, dismissed the proposal passed at the party’s annual delegates conference in Kuching yesterday as “just a populist idea to appeal to the urban folk”.

The SUPP resolution urged the Sarawak government to consider allocating shares in Petros to all Sarawakians, including newborns, with dividends to be declared and paid on a yearly basis.

See said the administration of the proposal would be a mind-bogglingly hard task.

See, who had in the past year pushed for a sovereign wealth fund similar to Norway’s to manage anticipated increased payments in oil and gas royalty, said it would be an hard task to track and register newborns and the dead.

He said it would need huge sums of money to keep track of all Sarawak’s shareholders, and identify and register qualified newborns in this large state, where a considerable number of the indigenes live in scattered, hard-to-reach pockets in the rural interior.

Echoing the National Registration Department, he said registration would be complicated as many did not have proper identification like birth certificates or MyKads.

“A huge sum of money would have to be spent in administration and operations (of the registration), which is less than productive.

“This is a bad idea. A populist idea to appeal to the urban folk,” he said.

Deputy Chief Minister James Masing agreed with See that the proposal was people-centric, but said it would be successful, and only needed money.

“If money is available via our oil and gas assets, then every Sarawakian will stand to gain.”

SUPP, the state’s oldest political party, is a member of the four-party Gabungan Parti Sarawak in the opposition-ruled state.

The other three parties are Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu, Parti Rakyat Sarawak, and People’s Democratic Party.

All four GPS parties were members of the state Barisan Nasional until they withdrew from the coalition in June.

The resolutions yesterday also confirmed the party’s central working committee’s decision to withdraw and leave BN, and fully supported Chief Minister Abang Johari Openg’s leadership of the coalition of state-based parties. – August 13, 2018.