15
Thursday, March 14, 1974
"Why it should have taken only until now for the government
to make the general public realize some decisive action is being taken
to curb rice profiteering at the retail level," he said, "is a lesson
which should be analysed and stored for future application bridging the communication gap."
He urged the government to co-operate with the City District
Office Area Committees, the Mutual Aid Committees, the Kaifong Associations
and other organisations in appealing to rice retailers to maintain reasonable
retail prices and to report to the government any blatant case of profiteering.
Commenting on the budgetary proposal on vehicle licence fees,
Mr. Cheong-Leen regarded as "over-simplified and wrong" the approach the
government adopted in restructuring the six platforms for private car licence
fees into two platforms.
"The increases based on the two platform structure are not only
steep, they are also unreasonable from the point of view of the general
public," he noted.
He hoped that the government would revert back to the six platform
fee structure for private care so that the burden of licence fee increases
is more equitably distributed.
As regards the 100-percent increase in licence fee of public light
buses, Mr. Cheong-Leen maintained that it should be replaced by some "fair
and reasonable" proposals which will not impose hardship on the livelihood
of their operators.
The proposal