IPOH, April 21 - Barisan Nasional may soon be flooded with another mountain of lawsuits in Perak, this time filed by each of the state’s 817 Pakatan Rakyat-appointed village chiefs who are fuming over the sudden termination of their services last week.
The group have now laid down an ultimatum for Mentri Besar Datuk Dr Zambry Abd Kadir - apologise and retract the termination order within the next 48 hours or face the possibility of a hefty lawsuit for breach of contract.
According to them, they had each received the termination letters signed by their respective district officers last Thursday.
The letters stated that in accordance with a decision made by BN’s state executive council on March 11, all the state’s 817 village chiefs and their respective village development and security committees (JKKKs) were officially defunct from that day on (April 16).
About 40 of them who turned up for a press conference at the Perak DAP headquarters here today, said the termination orders were illegal for their contract of service only expired in 2010.
Former state executive councillor Nga Kor Ming said that when the group was elected into their posts last year, their appointment letters clearly stated that they were to serve for a two-year term beginning Aug 1, 2008, until July 31, 2010.
“However, they have only served for a mere eight months and already they are being terminated.
“Unless the village chiefs had committed some sort of criminal offence or something to that effect, they cannot be removed from their posts without reason,” he said.
Nga added that since the people had chosen the chiefs through fair elections, it should only be through elections that they get booted out of their posts.
He also said that BN had no legal right to dissolve or declare defunct the JKKK for the body was a government machinery recognised and enshrined in the Perak Constitution.
“The JKKK has been in existence since Merdeka. They are the people’s bridge to the government,” he said.
He added that by dissolving the JKKK, some 8,170 committee members were affected.
Meanwhile, the village chiefs have also claimed that they had not received their allowances from the state government for the months of February, March and April.
Earlier in February, Dr Zambry had announced that the JKKK chiefs would no longer receive their RM400 monthly allowances from the state government.
He had said that this was because there would soon be only one JKKK body to serve the state, one that was endorsed by the BN.
When PR took over Perak last year, the positions of the then BN-appointed village chiefs became a bone of contention.
After much deliberation, the BN-appointed chiefs then decided to resign en masse and were reappointed into a parallel body called the JKKKP, which is funded and endorsed by the Federal Government.
The PR government on the other hand, held fresh village elections and allowed the people to choose their own chiefs, instead of appointing their own people.
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