Sabah wants trust fund set up for unused federal allocations, says Hajiji

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah wants a trust fund to be set up so that development allocations that are not used up by the end of each year can be saved for use later, says Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor (pic).

The Chief Minister said this proposed trust fund can also include the special grants for Sabah.

He said the matter was still being worked on, and he hoped the Federal Government would give it serious consideration.

“We in the state government hope this will be approved so we will not continue to lose out on funding that cannot be utilised (immediately) for development,” he told Datuk Darell Leiking (Warisan-Moyog) during the state assembly question-and-answer session here on Tuesday (May 23).

Leiking had asked about the steps taken by the state government to ensure that federal funding is fully utilised for Sabah’s development needs, seeing that the allocation amount returned to the Federal Government last year was huge.

Leiking also suggested a special trust fund so that projects unable to get under way by year's end can still proceed at a later date using the same allocation.

Earlier, Hajiji said that last year, a RM5.709bil federal allocation was given to Sabah but only RM4.457bil was used up and the remaining RM1.252bil returned.

Some projects were not able to begin for various reasons including contractor issues, utility problems, land and management matters and other complications, he added.

Hajiji said the Sabah government would also ensure that it approves all applications for federal projects first so that these will fit the state's requirements and ensure that they can begin and end on schedule.