Saravanan challenges DAP MP over chilli farm
Deputy Youth and Sports Minister M Saravanan today challenged DAP’s Serdang MP Ong Kian Ming to go through New Affirmative Action Movement (Naam) Foundation’s records, which he said will prove all is in order.
This comes after Ong accused Saravanan of conflict of interest, following the disbursement of RM19 million to the MIC-linked foundation, which the deputy minister heads as chairperson.
“I challenge him to come to Yayasan Naam’s office tomorrow. Tell him to bring his accountant and I will show him all the records,” he told Malaysiakini .
Ong yesterday said there is conflict of interest as the funds were disbursed through the Youth and Sports Ministry for a skills training programme on chilli fertigation.
Refuting this, Saravanan said the funds came from the Prime Minister’s Department and the Youth and Sports Ministry is only playing a monitoring role.
When contacted, Ong said he is willing to meet with Saravanan and will confirm the appointment with the deputy minister.
Speaking to Malaysiakini today, Saravanan also lambasted PKR Youth for likening Yayasan Naam to the Maika scandal .
Yayasan Naam is a registered company with MIC leaders named as its directors.
“This is comparing to two different worlds altogether. Yayasan Naam does not collect funds from the public. In fact, we fork out money to pay for operations,” he said.
He said the RM19 million funding was for all skills training programmes provided by Yayasan Naam, including in agriculture, mechanical and oil and gas technical training.
He said the programmes have produced “more than 3,000” successful graduates.
“Stupid news portals will publish anything without checking. When you write 129 graduates (for the chilli fertigation programme) and RM19 million funding, of course people will get angry,” he fumed.
“I can give you the full breakdown,” he said, urging the media to attend his press conference at one of the chilli farms in Taman Maluri, Kuala Lumpur, today, for the full picture.
He said the RM19 million allocated for Naam is part of the RM100 million the government had allocated for youth skills training.
Formed in November 2013, Naam, like Maika, was supposed to uplift the economic standing of 100,000 Indian youths in the country within four years from its founding.
Maika Holdings was an MIC initiative in the 1980s to help uplift the Indian poor via investments, with the party-managed firm collecting more than RM100 million from Indians, many of whom took out their savings to invest.
The company ended up losing money instead, purportedly from mismanagement.
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