Deputy Finance Minister Ahmad Maslan has been slammed for telling the public RM800 million had been spent on the December East Coast flood disaster, when only RM41 million had reportedly been spent.

DAP supremo Lim Kit Siang today queried the veracity of Maslan's figures, citing a Malay Mail Online (MMO) interview with National Security Council (NSC) secretary Mohamed Thajudeen Abdul Wahab yesterday.

"Yesterday, Jan 16, the cat was finally out of the bag. Maslan was not telling the truth as the federal government had never spent RM800 million on the flood victims on January 5," said Lim.

Thajudeen told MMO the actual approved allocation for flood relief aid was RM500 million, not RM800 million as Maslan had earlier claimed.

"Where did Maslan's RM800 million come from?" asked Lim.

"From Thajudeen's interview, it would appear that the federal government had not even spent RM100 million on the flood victims - confirming what I and many others had said that the flood victims, which must be close to a million with a quarter of a million evacuated to the various flood relief centres, could not feel that hundreds of millions of ringgit had been spent by the federal government on them – not to say on Jan 5, not even now, the fourth week of the worst floods catastrophe in Malaysia in living memory," said Lim.

In the said report, Thajudeen told MMO of the RM500 million allocation, cabinet has only approved RM41 million for 82,000 families of flood victims who stayed at evacuation centres.

"What about the families of flood victims who did not stay in evacuation centres? Are they to get nothing?," asked Lim, who is Gelang Patah MP.

"How is the balance of RM459 million to be spent? Maslan should apologise for the false claim on Jan 5," he said.

Little sign of spending

Last week Terengganu PAS questioned where the claimed millions spent had gone, saying many flood victims in the state were still without basic necessities .

Lim said when he was at the flood hit Kelantan he saw little evidence of the funds being spent on flood relief.

"I had visited Kota Bahru three times, been in Kuala Krai twice, even in the ground zero zones of Manek Urai, Kg Manjur and Kg Karangan, as well as been in Gua Musang, but I definitely did not feel or sense that RM500 million to RM600 million had been spent in Kelantan in relief efforts for the flood victims."

"I demand Maslan reveal how much had been spent in Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang and Perak and a full and detailed audit of this RM800 million claim, as I just do not believe that RM800 million had been spent on the flood victims, an impression shared by all NGOs and good-hearted Malaysians who had gone to the aid of the flood victims on their own efforts unrelated to government relief efforts," he said.