Malay Chamber represented in MPPP (UPDATED with BM Translation)

ARCHIVES 2010

By MT Webmaster On Feb 8, 2010

ANIL NETTO

Not everyone is aware that the Penang Malay Chamber of Commerce (DPMMPP) has had three different current office bearers successively appointed to an allotted seat in the Penang Island Municipal Council (MPPP) since 2008.

A DPMMPP leader, however, was involved in a racially charged protest over allegedly discriminatory Council enforcement action against Malay hawkers and food-stalls operators on Penang Island on Friday, 5 February.

The Penang government has allotted one seat to the DPMMPP and another to the Penang Chinese Chamber of Commerce in the MPPP. For 2008, the DPMMPP rep in the Council was Rizal Faris Mohideen, currently the head of DPMMPP. (Rizal was one of the speakers at the protest on Friday.) His successor as MPPP councillor was Yasir Hafiz Munawar Ali, currently the DPMMPP honorary assistant secretary. The present rep in the Council is Ali Akhbar Mohd Noor, a businessman who is now DPMMPP exco member.

It is within the jurisdiction of MPPP councillors to decide whether to grant “illegal traders” a moratorium or to enforce strictly or to determine which areas or categories comes first. A councillor may call up the enforcement officers and take them to task if they deviate from policy decisions but they cannot interfere once the committee-in-charge such as the permanent committee on health and licensing has made a decision.

An MPPP councillor has the opportunity of championing the hawkers’ and food-stall operators’ cause within the MPPP. He or she can ask for statistics, which the MPPP should provide to clear the air or to disprove allegations, and question the statistics. This would thus seem to be the obvious platform for the DPMMPP to raise such issues with the MPPP.