The Selangor Newspaper Vendors Association did not pass any resolution at its biennial general meeting today pertaining to the alleged intimidation faced by some of its members over the distribution of Oriental Daily News .

Association's secretary-general Lee Sin Leong said no member proposed any motion to discuss the matter.

"As such, we didn't discuss the issue. The main agenda for today's meeting was the amendment to the constitution of the association," he told malaysiakini.

No intervention

Lee also explained that the association would not "intervene" in the competition among the Chinese newspapers.

Asked on members' complaints regarding the alleged intimidation lodged to the association earlier, Lee claimed the association had resolved some of the cases accordingly.

"We are willing to help them if they submit their complaint to us with concrete evidence," he said.

More than 400 vendors in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur are members for the association. Ninety of them attended the meeting this morning.

In early January, some 60 newspaper vendors from Kuala Lumpur launched a protest to protect their interests in distributing Oriental Daily. They also lodged formal complaints to other relevant authorities such as the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry.

The vendors claimed that staff from rival newspapers like Pemandangan Sinar Sdn Bhd and Nanyang Press Holdings had attempted to prevent them from getting involved in the distribution of Oriental Daily.

Pemandangan Sinar, owned by Sarawakian timber tycoon Tiong Hiew King, is the publisher for Sin Chew Daily and Guang Ming Daily while Nanyang Press - acquired by MCA two years ago - is the publisher for Nanyang Siang Pau and China Press .

The four major newspapers have a combined circulation of close to 800,000 copies a day in the saturated Chinese dailies market.

No-action expected

Spokesperson for the 60-odd vendors Chow Chee Kong told malaysiakini this afternoon that he did not expect the association to take any action against those implicated in their complaint.

Chow, a vendor from Kepong in his forties, said he did not attended the meeting this morning because he was disappointed with the association.

He claimed that members of the committee were mostly agents (and not vendors) who had vested interest in maintaining close rapport with the major dailies.

Launched last Sept 29, Oriental Daily was slapped with a suspension order from the Home Ministry the same evening. No reason was given for the suspension while some quarters claimed it was political motivated.

However, the daily managed to hit the street again on Jan 1 after negotiations with the ministry but immediately ran into distribution problems. The paper claimed their circulation was being blocked by the rival groups to reach the readers.

Oriental Daily is owned by KTS Group, a company of another Sarawakian timber tycoon Lau Hui Kang who is said to be a business rival to Tiong.