Published on: Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Kota Kinabalu: There are no plans for the State government to have local government elections because the current system is working well.Local Government and Housing Minister, Datuk Hajiji Noor said even though there is room for improvement in the current local government administration system, there is no need for elections to change the existing structure."Penang is an opposition stateÉthe Sabah government and authorities do not have such suggestions or notion to follow suit."He said this after closing the second series of a five-day Rela Youth Squad basic training participated by a total of 184 youth at its training centre here on Monday.The Penang Legislative Assembly unanimously passed the Local Government Elections (Penang Island and Province Wellesley) Enactment 2012 on May 9.Hence, barring any legal challenges from the Barisan Nasional federal government or the Election Commission (EC), local government elections must be held in Penang within 180 days from the day the enactment has been enforced.State executive councillor in charge of local government and traffic management affairs, Padang Kota assemblyman Chow Kon Yeow had said that the state government would attempt to obtain a pre-emptive court declaration that the enactment was not ultra vires the Federal Constitution to compel the EC to conduct the local polls.On other developments, Hajiji said the Rela basic training was held to provide knowledge and experience to youth regarding the roles of Rela, as well as to let them understand and appreciate the spirit of volunteerism.He explained that youth make up of about 40.2 per cent or 11.4 million of the total population in Malaysia, hence their contribution to the country's development is significant.He pointed out that it was important to mould their characters to be someone successful and to be proud of, who can contribute to the national development from a young age."There are so many issues facing the youth, such as drug abuse, crime, uncontrolled partying and illegal racing, thus the government is taking all sorts of initiatives to tackle these problems," he said.In this respect, Sabah Rela Training Centre Commander, Colonel Rela Darman Dabang said the participants from areas such as Penampang, Kota Kinabalu, Tuaran and students from Eastern College, Institut Kemahiran Belia Negara (IKBN) and the Industrial Training Institute (ILP) were given mental and physical training the past five days."This is to train them to be more disciplined people, instill leadership, religious and cooperative values among them," he said.
Daily Express
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