GEORGE TOWN: Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng has been told to resign after he failed to improve and boost the income and livelihood of the people of Penang.
This follows the latest figures from the Statistics Department which showed that the mean monthly household income for Penang was below the national average.
Penang's mean monthly household income is only RM6,771 compared to the national mean average household income of RM6,958 .
Part Cinta Malaysia (PCM) deputy president Datuk Huan Cheng Guan said the findings by the Statistics Department was clearly very shocking and disappointing at the same time.
"The results from these findings clearly demonstrate the incompetency of Lim as the chief minister.
"To begin with, in 2009 when DAP first took over the Penang government, the average household income for Penang was above the national average. However, nearly 10 years after being the government, we have fallen below the national average household income," he said today.
Huan said this also clearly showed that since becoming the state government, the development of Penang and the income received by its people was lacking in pace compared to the development and income of the people of this country as a whole, especially Kuala Lumpur
"The slow progress of Penang also clearly proved that Lim had tremendously and remarkably failed to bring in necessary foreign direct investments and multi-national companies into the state.
"As a matter of fact, there are more companies that are trying to close their factories and headquarters in Penang by moving to other locations," he said.
Huan also pointed out it could be observed that the number of young Penangites, either married or single, who had moved to Kuala Lumpur to earn a better income.
"This is no surprise as Kuala Lumpur's mean average household income is RM11,692, which is about RM 5,000 more than Penang.
"It has to be noted too that there is not much difference between the cost of living in Penang and Kuala Lumpur, thus people in Kuala Lumpur have more disposable income compared to the people of Penang.
"Based on the above, I call upon Lim to resign as it has been proven that he has failed to improve and boost the income and livelihood of the people of Penang. In fact, due to his incompetency, there are now more people moving out of the state to Kuala Lumpur to earn a better living. Thus he has clearly failed as a chief minister," he said.
Penang MCA Youth Datuk Michael Lee, had in a statement on Monday, said that Penang had officially sunk to a below-average state for mean household income as the RM6,771 figure was below the national average.
Kuala Lumpur led the country with the highest monthly household income mean of RM11,692 for 2016 while Selangor recorded a monthly household income of RM9,463 a month.
Kelantan remained the state with the lowest household mean monthly income with RM4,214 a month.