A group of Maika Holdings shareholders want the government to intervene and bail out the troubled investment arm of MIC in order to help pay back all the shareholders.

"It could be done. We are not asking for the government to dump in billions. We just want RM106 million, which was the amount contributed by the 66,000 investors since Maika was set up," said spokesperson for the group of shareholders VK Vembarasan.

"With the government bail out, at least the shareholders, most of whom are with estate background, can get back their initial money which they had put into Maika," he told malaysiakini.

He said the shareholders were getting impatient with broken promises by Maika's directors that they would be offered a buy-back scheme.

"We have not heard anything from the company. We have not been paid dividends for years and now Maika wants to sell its only profit-making subsidiary," he lamented.

Vembarasan said that his group - which he claims to be a substantial number - would be putting forward this bail-out proposal to all shareholders who will be attending the company's annual general meeting this Thursday.

"We will be asking them to sign a memorandum and then we will forward the memorandum to the government, asking them to intervene and bail out this troubled company.

"As I said earlier, this is not to help Maika or its directors. The idea is for the government to help the shareholders," stressed the Klang-based businessman.

'We don't want any profit'

Another shareholder A Mutthiah said that he was confident many shareholders would support the bail out move as "it has come to point that we just want our money back".

"No one is dreaming of making a profit from our initial investments any longer," added the former estate worker from Rawang, Selangor.

"At the rate things are going with Maika, we have given up hope to see the return of our hard-earned cash. It has become very important now for the government to step in to help all the shareholders," said Mutthiah, who agreed with the suggestion made by Vembarasan and his group.

Maika was established in 1982 purportedly to enable Indian Malaysians to have a share in the country's economic growth.

The company raised RM106 million in 1984 from 66,000 investors but some shareholders - after seeing little returns on their investments - have since accused the company of squandering the capital through dubious channels.

Many Maika shareholders were estate workers who had pawned their family jewellery and withdrew their life savings to invest in the company. The investment company, however, has been a spectacular failure with many of its business ventures failing to take-off.

Maika has only paid its shareholders cash dividends on seven occasions to date, the last being in 1995. It will not be paying dividends this year too.

Last year, MIC president S Samy Vellu, under whose vision the investment company was formed, had said that a buy-back scheme would be implemented whereby Maika would pay RM130 for every RM100 invested. To date, nothing has materialised.

Police report

Shareholders are also upset that Maika directors have proposed to sell the company's only cash cow - insurance company Oriental Capital Assurance Bhd for RM129.8 million.

Maika claimed that the sale of OCAB would clean off all of its debts but shareholders claim that the sale would only act as a precursor to close down Maika.

Samy Vellu's son Vell Paari is the chief executive office of Maika.

On another matter, some shareholders have also lodged a police report at the Brickfields police station today, asking for protection and an assurance that the AGM on Thursday would not be hampered by violent behaviour.

Last year's AGM was marred by controversy and ill-temper when shareholder and DAP national vice-chairperson M Kula Segaran was roughed up by a MIC state assemblyman for asking questions pertaining to the investment company's finances.