Penang govt buys land for Tamil school

(The Star) – MAKKAL Osai quoted Penang Deputy Chief Minister Prof Dr P. Ramasamy as saying the state government had purchased a 1ha site to build a Tamil school.

He said the state executive council had agreed to allocate the land for the construction of the Valdor Estate Tamil school in Seberang Prai.

The plot was purchased for RM2mil from a private owner and will be handed over to the school within a year.

Prof Ramasamy said the private land adjoining the Tamil school had been bought and steps were being taken to register the school administrators as the landowners.

> Tamil Nesan reported Lembah Pantai MP Nurul Izzah Anwar calling on the Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) to deal directly with traders who want to do business in Brickfields.

She said the traders faced the problem of middlemen, who booked trading areas and rented them out at steep rates.

Nurul Izzah said the traders always faced similar problems every year during the Deepavali season.

She said DBKL had appointed the Kuala Lumpur Indian United Traders Association as the middleman in charge of renting out the stalls to the traders.

Nurul Izzah claimed that the original rental rates for each stall was between RM700 and RM800, but the association charged RM2,400 per tent by putting three tenants within one lot.

She said the traders were small-time businessmen and such high rentals would not be economically feasible for them.

Federal Territories and Urban Well-Being Deputy Minister Datuk M. Saravanan, who also visited the Brickfields area at the same time as Nurul Izzah, gave his assurance that the matter would be looked into.