At about 9:20 pm tonight, the Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Information, Multimedia and Culture, YB Datuk Salang Gandum, took to the floor of Parliament to reply to the questions posed by MPs during the last week Budget 2011 debate. He began with thanking MPs for bring up questions relating to his ministry. He said that he will be replying to the questions on IT/internet connectivity for the rural area, no reception of RTM TV programes in certain areas in Sarawak and Sabah, Astro and USP Fund.
YB Putatan stood up to question about internet connections in his area and asked when his constituency will have access to internet connectivity and the netbook programe. The Deputy Minister replied that so far there are only 430,000 unit of netbook have been given out to students in rural areas. Immediately many MPs including the members from Lengong, Kuala Kurau, another 3 MPS and I asked supplementary questions on the netbook, where Kuala Kurau MP asked whether it was true that netbook were given to the students and many netbook have been sold back to the vendor?
My supplementary questions were as follows:
1. Betul atau tidak tempahan telah dibuat untuk 1 juta unit netbook umtuk programe ini dan bukan 400,00 lebih?
2. Siapakah vendor atau contrator yang terlibat untuk supply netbook tersebut? Timbalan Menteri telah memberitahu Malaymail here baru ini senarai vendors untuk netbook akan dinaikkan dalam laman web Kementerian tetapi sehingga kini tiada pun.
3. Anak siapa dalam Kementerian terlibat dalam programe netbook? Anak Menterikah? Anak pegawaikah? Sila beritahu Dewan siapa yang terlibat dalam programe tersebut?
4. Kenapakah netbook dibekalkan ditempat yang tiada internet connectivity? Apa gunanya netbook bila tiada internet connection?
The Deputy Minister will provide answers to the above questions and other questions tomorrow because Parliament session for today ended at 9:30 pm. So the Deputy Minister will have to provide answers to the supplementary questions of MPs at 11:30 am tomorrow after the completion of Questions Time. It is going to be interesting tomorrow.
In another development, the Audit Committee in MCMC has not meet for almost a year. Yet MCMC went on a spending spree for netbook leaving only RM400 million in the USP Fund, the “Cash Cow”! Tomorrow I shall also table this question to the Deputy Minister for answers.
