KUCHING: Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP) Batu Lintang Youth has criticised Sarawak Democratic Action Party (DAP), accusing it of claiming credit for the efforts of others.

SUPP Batu Lintang Youth chairman Sih Hua Tong yesterday said it was “unethical and politically immoral” for state DAP treasurer Voon Lee Shan to claim credit for the effort of Deputy Works Minister Datuk Yong Khoon Seng who secured a development fund of RM1 million.

“SUPP Batu Lintang Youth is urging DAP to take the necessary disciplinary action against the Batu Lintang assemblyman,” Sih told a press conference at its branch office in Jalan Keretaapi here yesterday.

According to Sih, on February this year, the government approved a RM1 million fund for the improvement of the drainage system along Lorong Kapor 10, Lorong Kapor 11 and part of Jalan Temenggong Datuk Tan Meng Chong.

Sih said he was disgusted with the way Voon portrayed himself on Oct 10 in the various Chinese-medium newspapers as the person who had lobbied for the drainage improvement project when everybody knew that it was in fact Yong who did it.

He said he was also perplexed by Voon’s ignorance of newspaper reports on the fund approval as well as press statement by Yong, the Stampin MP, over the proposed drainage improvement work earlier this year.

“We want to inform the public that the project fund approval was actually due to the effort of Datuk Yong Khoon Seng. He successfully secured a RM1 million fund for the project but then we were surprised that Voon Lee Shan had claimed credit for it,” he said.

“The proposal over the project was reported in many local newspapers in February this year.

Even earlier on, there were already reports that Yong has lobbied for the fund. We are indeed surprised that Voon Lee Shan was not aware of these and we are also disappointed with that kind of attitude,” he said.

“We believe that the act of claiming credit is to cover up for not helping public to solve their problem. We believe that was why he claimed credit. We now want to ask him (Voon), what had he done to the people for the past 13 months?” Sih asked.

“In so doing, he was actually acting against the political ethics in a democratic system. As an elected people’s representative, one has to be careful with image and reputation. No elected representative should simply claim credit and mislead the public and so on,” he said.

“The culture of claiming credit must be disallowed in our society, no matter in politics or any organisation,” he added.

Sih claimed that the drainage improvement project was not the only one which Voon had claimed credit for.

“We are now in the process of retrieving all past records (on Voon’s action of claiming credit) because we have different records in different files.After we have gathered them we would like to share it with the public through the media,” he said.

“We feel perplexed when Voon said Datuk Yong should have make use of his capacity as Deputy Minister to get approvals for more infrastructure grants. It seems that Voon was not aware that Yong has been helping those in the area with the implementation of a lot of infrastructural works,” he said.