The Third Force: On the 1st of June 2018, Dr Mahathir Mohamad announced a decision by the newly minted Pakatan Harapan government to cancel the High-Speed Rail (HSR) project linking Kuala Lumpur to Singapore. Speaking at a press conference, the Prime Minister explained that move was necessary as the decision was Pakatan’s “from the very beginning.” Then, all of a sudden, something horrible happened.
Amnesia struck him just before he landed in Japan.
On the 12th of June 2018, he told the Nikkei Asian Review that the project wasn’t cancelled but shelved temporarily due to the high costs involved. His PA wasn’t around to remind him that a press conference had been held in Kuala Lumpur eleven days earlier to announce the scrapping of the project. And now, it appears as if the disease is spreading.
Two days ago, M Kulasegaran announced that a new regulation requiring restaurants to recruit only locals as cooks would come into effect on July 1. In announcing the decision, Kula made it clear that there “would be no compromise” and that all operators would be given till the year end to comply. Then, just yesterday, he clarified that when someone says “no compromise,” it simply means “let me see the backlash first before I decide if or not to make a U-Turn.”
He made a U-Turn.
If doctors don’t do something soon and the disease spreads, we may need to start referring to Pakatan Harapan as Pakatan Dalcha or Parti Manifestomato. I pray and hope that his doesn’t happen.
KUALA LUMPUR: It looks like the Human Resource Ministry has now backtracked on its directive on the “locals only cooks” announced by its minister yesterday.
After coming under fire from various quarters, its minister M. Kulasegaran today said that the ban on foreign cooks was only a proposal.
He said the ministry would hold further discussion with stakeholders before finalising anything.
“The call for restaurants to hire local cooks was just a suggestion and a date was given as there needs to be a cut off period,” he said.
On Friday, Kulasegaran was quoted as saying that all restaurants serving Malaysian food would be required to recruit only locals as cooks from Jan 1.
He was reported to have said that the policy was needed to reduce the number of foreign workers in the country.
The number of foreign workers in the country has seen an increase from 1.06 million in 2002 to 1.8 million in 2017.
Of these, about 250,000 work in the service sector including in restaurants.
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