PETALING JAYA: The government slices and cuts aid targeting only for the B40, Segambut MP Hannah Yeoh said today.
There is hardly anything for the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) who are mainly in the M40, she pointed out.
“And when the M40 drowns, the T20 too will be breathless. This Government is a bystander, not proactive and employs the wait-and-see attitude. SMEs are in their final lap of calling out for help,” Yeoh said in a statement today.
“We have barely survived two weeks of total lockdown when the government announced a further extension aimed at lowering Covid-19 positive cases that have shown no signs of a decline.
“A total lockdown announcement without any blanket financial aid announcement is a blatant act of irresponsibility by the government.”
Yeoh said the people want a government that does not behave like a mere prison warden keeping people behind the grills of their homes, sentencing them indiscriminately.
“The rising Covid cases were contributed by the government’s sheer incompetence and confusing, contradictory and nonsensical SOPs. How many bags of rice can we continue to give?
“How many more food baskets to distribute and for how many more weeks do we need to do this? When (Datuk Seri) Ismail Sabri stands behind the rostrum to announce the extension of this total lockdown, Malaysians expect to see Tengku Zafrul (Tengku Abdul Aziz), the Finance Minister standing alongside him, announcing financial relief instantaneously to help Malaysians cope. But this did not happen.”
Yeoh related her experience when she went to a mall to buy food and entered a fruit shop to buy some grapes recently.
“This was the first time I saw fruits being sold at heavily discounted prices because they were no longer fresh and I was the only person there,” She said.
“That sight was heartbreaking. I thought of their stocks, their rental and the workers’ salaries. We are no longer talking about profit or breaking even. We are talking about survival. We are now talking about preventing more from losing jobs and businesses not closing shops.”
