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Llew-Ann Phang (The Sun) KUALA LUMPUR (March 30, 2008): MIC president Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu will meet Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Home Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Syed Jaafar Albar to seek the release of the five Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) leaders detained under the Internal Security Act.
After addressing the party’s Divisional Leaders’ Workshop today, Samy Vellu told reporters M. Manoharan and R. Kenghadaran’s spouses visited him last week to seek his help to free their husband, on grounds that Kenghadran is of poor health and that Manoharan is now a Member of Parliament. Dismissing notions that he was doing this to gain publicity, he said it was done out of fairness and sympathy, adding that had earlier helped four students and alleged Hindraf supporters get their murder charge dropped. When told that the detention of the five men had sparked a furore in the Indian community resulting in the lack of support for the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition, particularly the MIC in the recently concluded general election, he said: “The real source for this is poverty, difficulties in obtaining loans, in getting placing in (public) universities). All of these reasons are correct. These are the issues against us. “We raised this a long time ago with the government but the government was slow in taking any action. My question is why is it so delayed? I’m not saying the government has not done anything. It has been fair to give us our own university and college and programmes for training and small loans but it is not to value.” Samy Vellu also lamented the government’s annual allocation of RM3 million for youth training, saying it was insufficient to fund activities for some 400,000 youths. He said he had written to Abdullah for a special fund for this and that an announcement would be made when all issues have been "ironed out". “Otherwise, the people will condemn us for not doing anything,” he added. Samy Vellu also commented on the MIC representation in the Pahang exco line-up, saying he had written to Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Adnan Yaakob two weeks ago. “I am not prepared to beg anymore. If the Pahang government feels the Indians do not deserve an exco, then let it be like that." Samy Vellu revealed his plans of going on a nationwide roadshow and expressed confidence of working with his former deputy Datuk S.Subramaniam despite their supporters having disagreements amongst each other. “Just because two or three people cannot see eye-to-eye, it doesn’t mean all of them cannot agree." Samy Vellu also took potshots at the opposition, saying that they were doing what BN was doing in distributing seats in excos. “Why only one Indian (state exco) in Perak, only one in Penang and one in Selangor? There must be three fellows! In one month (since the elections), I learnt a lot about how to tell lies to people and attract them but we do not do that,” he said. Earlier in his speech on rebranding the MIC, he said among the people’s concerns were employment issues involving the Social Security Organisation, youth training, the welfare of estate workers, the lack of employment for Indians in the government and micro-businesses finding it hard to manage. He said the MIC will establish an Implementation Coordination Committee (ICC) to review and analyse community needs and requests through divisional leaders’ feedback. He said the ICC will meet on a bi-monthly basis and MIC will continue its ‘Meet-The-People Session’ on Tuesdays from April. The MIC has also launched "An Agenda for Action to Address the Socio-Economic Disadvantages of Malaysian Indians’"which is comprehensive and will be implemented with the Federal Government’s assistance, he said.
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