At the 2022 Annual General Meeting (AGM) of The Kuala Lumpur Chinese Assembly Hall (KLCAH), the attendants unanimously passed all resolutions, including continuing to invite more organizations to join the big family of KLCAH. With the recent addition of 17 national and regional organizations, KLCAH currently has 83 organization members, and aims to exceed 100 by the end of this year, to make KLCAH one of the most influential Chinese organizations in Malaysia.
KLCAH stresses that the purpose of inviting more organizations or groups to join and strengthen KLCAH is to gather more organizations that care about society and the country, forming a louder and more effective voice for the Chinese community not only in Kuala Lumpur, but in Malaysia.
The AGM made nine other resolutions, calling on the government to stabilize the economy first and be the government of the people by the people and for the people; public opinion matters, and the government has to listen to the voice of the people in formulating the national budget; supporting the re-implementation of GST, but strictly needing to avoid repeating the past mistakes; urging the government to speed up the import of foreign workers so as not to slow down the pace of economic recovery; defending a plural society and rejecting extremist thinking; calling on the government to stabilize monetary policy and avoiding losing our competitive advantages in the international market; supporting education to reshape the future of the nation; defending multilingualism and also supporting the study of the Malay language; and supporting the police’s stern action in making an example of those committing frauds in tackling ever-increasing fraud cases.
Nearly 150 people attended the 2022 KLCAH AGM, which was held on Saturday. Those who attended included the Founding President and Permanent Honorary President Datuk Liew Poon Siak, Honorary Adviser Tan Sri Datuk Tee Hock Seng, Tan Sri Lee Lam Tai, Dato Seri Michael Chong, Dato Seri How Kok Choong, Datuk Seri Ng Thien Phing, and Legal Adviser Dato Michael Wong Meng San.
Datuk Seri KK Chai, President of KLCAH, said he was happy that the number of attendees of the AGM was multiple times higher than previous year, despite this was not an election year, and this showed that the vision and representation of KLCAH gained more and more recognition and support; more importantly, the majority of the attendees were young people, which also meant that the direction that KLCAH took made it a suitable platform for young people.
He said that this is his third term as the president of KLCAH, which now not only represents Kuala Lumpur but also becomes more like a national organization that has a louder voice and dares to express the people’s voice on current affairs, and its scope of activities is also not limited to Kuala Lumpur.
“We keep issuing an average of one to two statements and public polls per month. As KLCAH is getting more and more attention, it will play a more active role in the Chinese community, that is, we will be ‘concerned about politics but remain nonpartisan’ and strive for a better Malaysia.”
With all the legal documents for the purchase of the new property already in place, KLCAH also now officially has a ‘home’!
KK Chai pointed out that it has always been his wish to find a suitable ‘home’ for KLCAH. Under the collective efforts of advisors and committees, they have bought a unit at Maju Link, Terminal Bersatu Selatan at Tasik Selatan, Kuala Lumpur, and become the Head Office of KLCAH.
“This unit is on the fifth floor of Tower 3, with an area of about 2,000 square feet and is priced at RM1.09 million. The location is convenient, has an activity space, and can display the signboard of KLCAH.”
He pointed out that the renovation work is about to begin, and he has absolute confidence that the KLCAH will hold its AGM next year on the new premise.
“We will organize a fundraising dinner for the new premise this year, and we will engrave the names of contributors on the walls of KLCAH, as a remembrance of their contributions.”
KK Chai pointed out that some policies during the pandemic period, such as stopping the import of foreign workers for over two years, have brought to the surface the problem of serious shortage of foreign workers in the country, leading to the sad situation of having to turn business away because of lack of workforce. This has affected all sectors of the economy, especially the manufacturing, agricultural and construction sectors, causing tens of billions of ringgits of losses.
He pointed out that the government aware of the problem, but the policy of banning import of foreign workers is still in place, so they call on the government to allow foreign workers to enter the Malaysian labour market immediately; the government should simplify the application process, and at the same time, continue to introduce various recruitment and training schemes for local staff.
“Apart from fighting the pandemic, the people have also witnessed one political drama after another, changing three prime ministers in four years. We call on the government and opposition parties to take a serious look at the difficulties faced by the people and the country, first stabilizing the economy, politics, and the epidemic, and then only hold a general election.”
He also urged the government to pass the anti-hopping law and perform a parliamentary reform as soon as possible to create a healthy Malaysian democracy.
“In any case, the people should not look at the current situation too pessimistically and should not adopt a negative attitude of not-voting in the next national election.”
