KUALA LUMPUR (May 13, 2008): The "sound of music" can sometimes be too excessive as in the case of Petronas’ Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO) which costs RM3.5 million a month to sustain.

Lim Guan Eng (DAP-Bagan) pointed this out in his debate on the motion of thanks on the royal address in Parliament today, charging that these funds, spent on the orchestra that is only made up of 5% locals and 95% foreigners, could be utilised better.

"Where the Barisan Nasional (BN) government refuses to allow Petronas to share its profits with the people, this giant fuel company is wiling to pay its foreign musicians a monthly wage of between RM16,000 and RM28,000 a month.

"Each of them have two months paid leave. The conductor is paid RM130,000 a month and his assistant RM50,000. Since its 10 years of establishment, the orchestra has cost Petronas RM500 million," he said.

Lim, who is also Penang Chief Minister, questioned Petronas' willingness "to waste so much money but does not give any benefit to the local musicians", reiterating his call for its profits to be handed out to the people to help them cope with rising prices.

He said since 1997, Petronas had dished out gas subsidies amounting to RM58.2 billion of which RM48.8 billion was given to the energy sector and RM9.4 billion to the non-energy sector.

"Of the subsidies to the energy sector, the Independent Power Producers (IPP) enjoy more than Tenaga Nasional Bhd. As an example, in 2007 subsidies to the energy were RM15.6 billion where TNB only received RM5 billion, RM3.9 billion were given to the private sector and RM6.7 billion was handed to the IPPs," Lim said.

He called for a reduction of subsidies to IPPs, claiming that it was not fair for them to be enjoying high subsidies to be producing their billions in profits.

Lim also called for the establishment of the Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission and the abolishment of laws against human rights like the Internal Security Act, the Official Secrets Act, the Sedition Act and the Printing Presses and Publications Act.

In his debate, Selangor Mentri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim (PKR-Bandar Tun Razak) assured the house that the Selangor administration was educating its people on conservation, especially in its monthly 20 cubic-metre free water implementation.

"We are training the people to be conservative through the price mechanism and to educate them on the proper usage of water.

"Ahmad Maslan (BN-Pontian) claimed this is Pakatan Rakyat’s way of bribing the people of Selangor but if you are interested, write to the administration and if you are interested to get free water, write to us because we have a system to set aside names of users and we can use this money to aid the Tamil and Chinese schools who need it," Khalid said.

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