Materia Medica Malaysiana

Govt to look into S’wak’s concern

PUTRAJAYA: Deputy Home Minister Datuk Chor Chee Heung Thursday said concerns expressed by the Sarawak Government over claims that criminals from the peninsula are being banished to the State will be looked into.

However, he said the Federal Government would not put criminals under restricted residence to Sarawak and Sabah unless they lived there.

“I do not think this (claims by the Sarawak Government) is what has taken place,” he said at a media conference after receiving a delegation from China’s Labour and Social Security Ministry at his office, here.

Chor said he had, in fact, had a discussion on the matter with the Secretary of Security and Public Order Division Datuk Hamzah Md Ros.

He said this when asked to comment on a statement by the Member of Parliament for Lambir, Aidan Wing, at the State Legislative Assembly sitting recently that banishing of criminals from the peninsula to the State should be stopped on security grounds.

On reports that a man in Taiwan had come down with the feared Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), he said this should not cause alarm.

“This is a very special case and it does not mean that SARS is coming back to threaten the safety and health of our community in this part of the world,” he said.

He said governments in the region would surely have taken adequate measures to prevent the spread of the disease.

Chor expressed confidence that the spread of the disease would not reach the scale that was seen earlier this year and put full faith in the Government to handle the situation.

Taiwan health authorities said a 44-year-old SARS researcher at a military hospital had tested positive for the virus and was probably infected in the laboratory where he worked.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said the case appeared to be isolated.

The man was in Singapore from Dec 7 to Dec 10 for a medical conference. Hours after returning to Taiwan, he started to run a fever - one of the first symptoms of the virus.

On Thursday’s visit, the Deputy Minister told the visitors from China to spread the message that Malaysia welcomed with open arms tourists and students from the republic with the understanding that they would abide by the law of the land when in this country.

In particular, Chor said he drove home the point that Chinese women should stay away from criminal activities such as prostitution when in Malaysia, with the excuse that they needed money after overstaying. - Bernama