Stop confusing the public, tourism minister told

Following the incident at the Penang's famous tourist spot - the Batu Ferringhi Beach, where a water scooter driven by two Myanmar operators hit a Chinese tourist, the Penang state government had issued a temporary ban on the water scooter activities in the tourist beach.

The temporary ban was announced by the Penang State Executive Councillor for Local Government and Traffic Management Chow Kon Yeow in order to prevent such incident from happening again. Aside, the temporary ban was also enforce to allow the Penang Municipal Council (MPPP) to review the use of such machines in highly populated tourist beaches, to come up with some procedures that would govern the use of these machines and to ensure proper accountability on the owners and operators.

Things, however were made from bad to worst when the federal tourism minister and MCA vice-president Datuk Seri Dr Ng Yen Yen later announced that there is no need for the Penang state government to issue a temporary ban on the usage of the water scooter in beaches saying that such move would hurt the tourism industry in the island.

And following the statements made by Dr Ng, those irresponsible operators decided to defy the ban by continue issuing those water scooters to the enjoying tourists and they would reason that the tourism minister says no need to ban.

Thanks to Dr Ng, the entire situation and counter measures has been confused and so do the public, especially the tourist. Some tourist were even asking, whether to listen to the tourism minister or the state government, while the hotel managements avoided talking on this subject and said that all their customers should know what are the risks when they are at the beach.

Again, the tourism minister also put the blame on the state government for not enforcing some regulations on the usage of the water scooters earlier which resulted to the incident and injury.

We would like to urge the minister Dr Ng to stop the blame game and start working with the state government to jointly come out with an effective action plan to resolve this issue and to prevent such incident from happening again.

Dr Ng must also remember that she is also the tourism minister in-charge of promoting the industry in the entire nation.

Let us recall some event to what Dr Ng had tried to sabotage before. When the state government launched its efforts to promote some measures and guidelines to be enforced at some identified tourists spots in the island, Dr Ng did not bother to review them although her ministry was repeatedly invited to the said review panel.

The other one was, when the tourism ministry organized a tourist event in the island about a year ago, Dr Ng decided to ignore the state government's role by not inviting them to the event, thus leaving state dignitaries in the blind on the federal sponsored event.

The third and very serious issue is, the tourism ministry under Dr Ng had refused to cooperate with the state-appointed tourism action committee, but instead choose to establish its own Penang "tourism action council" and put its own federal appointees, thus totally ignoring all the state government officials who are actually in-charge of tourism. Dr Ng even choose to ignore the Penang State Executive Councillor Tourism Danny Law Heng Kiang on several occasions, events or meetings that are concerning with tourism.

So, who actually didn't want to cooperate with the Penang state government at the first place? And when something happened, Dr Ng is quick to point her fingers on the state administration and politicize the issue to make it a big one.

See! Dr Ng had already claimed herself a credit, making herself a hero by quickly visiting the victim of the incident, named Zhu Li, bringing along with her all those state and divisional MCA leaders.

Dr Ng Yen Yen is making politics out of this incident. How about visiting those two detained Myanmar operators who drove the water scooter and thanking them because she now have some political mileage to claim?