Businesses unhappy over IWK charges
The Star 20/11/2003

KUALA LUMPUR: Nearly a decade after Indah Water Konsortium (IWK) took over the country's sewerage management, disagreement over charges remain a thorny issue for the business community with some owing hills running into hundreds of thousand ringgit.

In revealing this, Associated Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Malaysia (ACCCIM), which has 70,000 members, called on IWK to freeze its legal actions pending consultation to reach an amicable solution and to work out an acceptable price structure ACCCIM infrastructure and privatization committee chairman Goh Hok Yen said the chamber had initiated a survey to gather feedback from the business community on the issue and was expected to submit a memorandum to the Government early next year.

He added that the community disagreed with the basis of calculation for the sewerage handling rate imposed by IWK.

"Some business operators have held back payment as they are still lobbying for a dialogue with IWK to work out a more equitable rate.

"Now, we want to compile the grouses or opinions through a survey that covers members and non-members, especially to hear from businessmen from other communities, so that we will have a bigger pool of data to analyse and relate the feedback to the Government," Goh said yesterday.

The sewerage management was privatised in 1994 when IWK took over the responsibility from the local authorities. However, in 2000, the company was "nationalized" again when the Finance Ministry took over all the equity in IWK.

The chamber's IWK charges survey form has been uploaded to its website at www.acccim.org.my and the closing date is Dec 30. The chamber, estimated that it would take a month to analyse the questionnaire before submitting a report to the Finance Ministry and the Housing and Local Government Ministry.

Based on the initial feedback from internal networking, Goh said businesses located in central business districts were especially hard hit as the charges were based on the value of properties apart from the number of people utilizing the premises.

For enquiries on how to participate in the IWK charges survey, please call ACCCIM at 03-2145 2503.