SEREMBAN: Barisan Nasional’s Datuk Thinalan T. Rajagopalu is courting Seremban Jaya voters with a personal 10-point manifesto and a community welfare fund.
Known locally as Cikgu Thina, the MIC leader said voters wanted change after 18 years under the same representative and with long-standing complaints left unresolved.
He said the main grievances in Seremban Jaya, home to about 33,000 voters, were poor basic facilities and services.
Residents had only a police post and no police station, he said, and no bank branches, only ATMs.
He said there were also limited public spaces for children to play football, and gaps in welfare aid, including from the Social Welfare Department and Social Security Organisation.
Thinalan said what set him apart from his two rivals was his own manifesto, on top of the Barisan and state manifestos.
“When it is my own, it carries more weight,” he said, describing the 10 pledges as promises he could deliver.
He also said he would channel his own allowance into a community fund for residents facing emergencies.
The fund, he said, could pay for laptops for students, school bus fares and even funeral costs for families who could not afford them.
He said MIC could also offer young voters vocational training at a party-run college, with scholarships for those who did well.
Thinalan said he had launched a mobile app which would allow residents voice their problems so that he or his officers could go to their homes.
Too many representatives, he said, retreat to their offices after winning and wait for voters to come to them.
A former town councillor, Thinalan contested the neighbouring Sri Tanjung seat in the 2018 state election but lost.
Seremban Jaya is seeing a three-cornered fight between him, Pakatan Harapan’s S. Mugunthan and Bersatu’s Mahendran Ramasamy.
