More than 8,000 flood victims in Selangor yet to receive aid, says MB

SHAH ALAM - A total of 8,395 recipients have yet to receive the Bantuan Selangor Bangkit (BSB) assistance allocated by the state government for victims of the massive floods that hit the state at the end of last year, said Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Amirudin Shari.

He said the Klang district had the highest number of recipients who had not received the aid at 7,236 people; followed by Kuala Langat (530), Petaling (348), Sepang (223), Kuala Selangor (56) and Gombak (two) while for three districts, namely Hulu Langat, Sabak Bernam and Hulu Selangor, channelling of the aid has been fully completed.

"As of March 14, the state government has approved and channelled BSB payments to 118,110 families involving an allocation of RM118.11 million. Meanwhile, out of 25 fatalities, the families of 14 of them were eligible to receive BSB assistance," he said at the state assembly sitting here today.

According to him, a total of RM132.628 million of BSB assistance had been channelled to all land and district offices with the balance of the allocation so far standing at RM14.378 million.

He said this in reply to a question from Azmizam Zaman Huri (PH-Port Klang) who asked whether the BSB had been paid to all flood victims.

At the same time, he said, a total of 2,942 applications were rejected because they did not meet the criteria with some of the applications being found to be overlapping while 300 applications were still in the process of being reviewed.

Amirudin said all payments were expected to be settled by March 31 while payments in arrears, as well as appeal applications, will be processed until April 30.

"Now we no longer organise handing over of the payments at halls, so the remaining recipients will be contacted directly and we will make remittances into their accounts via electronic funds transfer (EFT),” he said.

To Azmizam's question on what action would be taken against individuals who made false BSB claims, Amirudin said action would be taken after all BSB payments were completed on March 31.

He also explained that the reason for the delay in the payment of the assistance was because the state government received a high number of applications, which was more than 10 times the number of heads of households moved to temporary evacuation centres (PPS).

"Besides that, there were overlapping applications which required verification to be done and we had to arrange and coordinate finances because the state government channelled the BSB together with compassionate aid money from the Federal government," he said -BERNAMA.