Together with my lawyer, we've decided to withdraw the bid to strike out Syabas defamation suit against me, to give the earliest possible opportunity for the full trial to be carried out and witnesses summoned for testimony. We are looking forward to putting Syabas CEO, Tan Sri Rozali Ismail on the witness stand to answer various allegations of misappropriation and mismanagement in the Selangor water concessionaire.
I see no element of defamation in the alleged "defamatory words" published in Nanyang Siangpau, and I look forward to defending them during the trial. We are also expecting to bring in experts from the industry as witnesses to provide evidence in support of our case.
The judge has set June 20 for case management, and expects the trial to be carried out in July/August.
Full hearing for Syabas suit
2011/05/19
KUALA LUMPUR: Petaling Jaya Utara member of parliament Tony Pua has withdrawn his application to strike out the defamation suit against him by Syarikat Bekalan Air Selangor Sdn Bhd (Syabas).
This is because both parties have agreed for all issues to be heard at trial, Pua's lawyer Ang Hean Leng said yesterday.
Ang said the court had set June 20 for the next case management.
The water company claimed that Pua had caused to be published an article entitled "Tony Pua: Selangor Government must have water rights to prevent rate hike" in a Chinese daily last November. It stated that the words were understood to mean that Syabas was incompetent in managing water supply rights and that the defamatory words had affected its business.
In his statement of defence, Pua claimed he was appointed as the spokesperson for "Return Water Rights to the People" campaign, launched by the Selangor state government and had offered his views when asked during a forum.
He also disputed the translation of the title of the article as stated in the statement of claim. He added that it should have been translated to read as, "Tony Pua: To ensure no hike in water tariff, Selangor state government wants management rights of water supply".
2 comments:
They just want to intimidate and scare you off but confronting them is the right thing to do. You should try to gather all information on Puncak Niaga's 30+ associate companies and what their involvement is in the running of SYABAS.There are many industry players out there who are not happy with the control of Puncak over Syabas.
One of the most important purchases of water companies is water meters by which consumption is billed and revenue collected. They pushed through the approval and purchase of China-made low quality meters over the proven meters used over the years. When installed the China meters are ok but over the months, the accuracy drops quite badly. I have been paying about Rm60 per month with the old meter which was installed 10 years before. After a few months to a year after the new meter was installed, my water bill dropped to about half. With the 20 cu. m. free water, I am now paying even less.
I am not complaining as are others but please look into the metering NRW losses and hopefully you may find a case to support you.
Agreed with the writer.
When I was a rookie engineer my boss asked me to supervised 3 year Uni students to observe meter readings without any information - like to killing field. Those UNi students are treated as cheap Bangla workers.
In water board workshop, we found all the meters have different readings even though the same quantity of water is passing through the 10 meters in series. Therefore the accuracies of those meters are really in doubt
Post a Comment