Among others, the members of parliament today debated the issue of fake MyKads as well as the long wait for proper roads in Sabah and Sarawak.

Deputy Minister: Fake Mykads not a major issue

Deputy Home Minister Chor Chee Heung today believed that the fake MyKad issue was still in control despite various concerns raised by Pakatan Rakyat MPs.

Answering queries made by Eric Majimbun (Independent-Sepanggar) who referred to a case where a voter had wanted to vote but discovered that his identification card (MyKad) was registered to a dead person, Chor said that there was no need to press the panic button.

"Maybe this is a case of falsification and I believe that this kind of cases cannot escape detection long as the chip in the MyKad cannot be falsified or cloned," he said.

He added that even if the chip in the card was damaged, the immigration department has a duplication of the same data in its database and that information could not be falsified.

"If the illegal immigrants are found to have in their possession fake MyKads, the fake cards will be detected eventually," he said.

Question over allocation for vernacular schools

Deputy Education Minister Wee Ka Siong (BN-Ayer Hitam) in reply to Tan Kok Wai (DAP-Cheras) today defended the government's allocations for vernacular schools.

He was responding to Tan's remarks that the RM50 million allocated for Chinese and Tamil schools in the new stimulus package announced by Finance Minister Najib Abdul Razak was insufficient for the needs of the vernacular schools.

Tan had also alluded to the poor track record of the government in promising the construction of new schools.

However Wee, also the MCA Youth chief, defended the government, saying that the RM50 million will be spread to 880 and 374 Chinese and Tamil schools respectively.

These schools, he said, fell under the fully-aided schools category. He also accused the opposition of playing with numbers to prove their point.

He rejected the claim that if the new allocation was divided to the number of schools in operation, then every school will only be getting less than RM30 a day from the additional funding.

Waiting for 40 years for good roads

A constant theme from all the Sabah and Sarawak representatives today was the conditions of roads in the two states and the lackadaisical approach the federal government has for the building of roads for their zones.

"We are not sure if they will be built or not. Not sure after all the promises made," said Lim Su Kien (DAP-Bintulu).

Echoing Lim's view was BN MP for Kapit Alexander Nanta Linggi, who said they have been waiting for 40 years for these roads.

"We are hoping that the government takes this seriously. We keep winning general elections but nothing enough is done."

Following suit in remonstrating about the lack of roads in their constituency were Raine Unggi (BN-Tenom) and Ahmad Lai Bujang (BN-Sibuti).