Woman disappointed with SMC and police for inability to solve case of her missing car

SIBU: A 41-year-old woman claimed yesterday that a top official in Sibu Municipal Council (SMC) urged her ‘to forget about the incident and buy a new car’ when she went to see the council about her missing car.

Her Toyota Hilux was parked at the multi-storey car park in Sibu Central Market on that day.

“However, one of the top officials told me to forget about the incident and buy a new car. The official even sarcastically said that since I had the money to buy a Toyota Hilux, then I must be rich enough to buy another car. What type of an official is that? Doesn’t he know that it takes years for a commoner like me to save that amount of money to buy the car,” she claimed.

It has been more than a month of waiting for the recovery of her Toyota Hilux parked at the multi-storey car park at Sibu Central Market but the 41-year-old owner surnamed Huong finds “the prolonged wait rather disappointing and agonising”.

Huong claimed that she had not received any news regarding her stolen car from the authorities concerned.

“Is it so difficult for a commoner like me to seek the police or the SMC for help? If the stolen vehicle belongs to someone prominent, I believe the outcome would surely be a different story,” she alleged at the press conference held at the DAP’s office here yesterday morning.

Since her vehicle was stolen on June 21, Huong claimed that she had gone to see top officials of SMC on several occasions.

Huong hit out at the authorities for not ‘taking sweeping action’ when she first lodged the police report.

“Had they done so, there might be a better chance of recovery,” she claimed.

Huong further claimed the chance of recovery was getting more remote.

“However, deep down in my heart, I still hope the police will do something to help me trace the car,” she said.

According to Huong, she parked her car, bearing plate number QSE33xx at the Sibu Central Market multi-storey carpark on June 21 at about 9.50 am before she went to buy vegetables.
She returned at about 11am but was shocked to discover her car missing.

Huong immediately went to the SMC pondok but was told to lodge a police report.

She then went to the nearby police pondok but claimed there was no police personnel around except for one off-duty CID officer at the scene.

Huong claimed she requested the CID to help and informed all the mobile police to block the route of the thieves.

CCTV records later showed a middle-aged man wearing a yellow and green-striped T-shirts driving away her car at about 10.46 am.

It was not known how the culprit managed to drive away the car and whether he was using a fake or genuine parking ticket to exit the SMC ticketing booth.

Huong claimed that she hid the parking ticket at ‘a very secretive place inside the car’ and she still believed that the culprit could have used other techniques to exit the SMC ticketing booth.

Meanwhile, DAP State Publicity secretary David Wong, at a press conference, criticised the police for not doing enough to help solve the case.

“Since the whole episode was recorded on CCTV and the police also have the identity card of the suspect, there is no reason it took them so long to solve the case,” he said.

Wong also questioned the usage of the CCTVs, adding that if it could not help to provide any lead, then it should be dismantled

“What is the use of CCTVs if the footage it recorded could not be used to trace the criminals. If that is the case, then the CCTVs should be dismantled to save taxpayers’ money,” he added.