Sarawak, Sabah to reach consensus on Tourism Tax

KUCHING: Sarawak and Sabah expect to arrive at a common stand on the tourism tax at a meeting between their tourism ministry officials in Kota Kinabalu this Tuesday (July 4).

Minister of Tourism, Arts, Culture, Youth and Sports Datuk Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah believes that August 1 will not be an ideal deadline to implement the new tax system especially when hoteliers and tourism players are still in the dark.

“It will depend on the tax mechanism on the ground and whether the hotel or industry players fully understand and know what to do.

If they are not prepared, August 1 “belum dapat” (not yet),” said Karim to reporters at his Hari Raya Aidilfitri open house held at Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka yesterday.

He also said members from the Malaysia Association of Hotels have revealed their problems and concerns over the tourism tax during a meeting with him recently.

“They (association) have not received anything. They only read about the tax in the media. Which is why I always wanted it (tourism tax) to be deferred until everybody are prepared for it,” said Karim who is also Asajaya assemblyman.

Touching on the 3,000 tourists from China who have cancelled their trip to Malaysia after being informed of the new tourism tax, Karim said he can verify that all of them are real tourists who wanted to visit Malaysia including Sarawak.

“Not all wanted to come to Sarawak as some of them want to visit Semenanjung Malaysia, when they heard of the tax, they have opted to choose a neighbouring country instead which is bad for our publicity and our tourism industry,” said Karim.

He added that the cancellation of the group of tourists to visit Malaysia is worrying as it stemmed from Malaysia’s own mistake of trying to implement the new tax without looking at the implications on the tourism industry.

On another note, Karim is in full support for each state representative to adopt a school as an approach to improve the command of the English language among students.

“It is a good suggestion especially when it is intended to strengthen the usage of the English language especially in rural schools,” said Karim who noted a decline of English proficiency in the rural areas.

Besides English, students he added, must also make an effort to learn as many languages as possible such as Mandarin or any other dialects of the local communities in Sarawak.

He also said in his constituency (Asajaya), English proficiency is not a big issue as the area is near to Kuching city.

“I do not think that we need to identify the schools one by one as they are already “pandai” (clever),” said Karim.

Also being asked to comment on the circular was Minister of Welfare, Community Well Being, Women, Family and Childhood Development Datuk Fatimah Abdullah who said as long as it does not clash with the national education syllabus, the initiative will augur well for students to master English.

“We have to welcome and support any calls being made to improve the student’s academic performance,” said Fatimah who admitted of not seeing the circular yesterday.

Among those present at the open house were Chief Minister Datuk Amar Abang Johari Tun Openg and his wife Datin Amar Dato Juma’ani Tun Tuanku Bujang, Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas, State Legislative Assembly speaker Datuk Amar Asfia Awang Nassar, Minister of Education, Science and Technological Research Dato Sri Michael Manyin, Assistant Minister of Youth and Sports Snowdan Lawan.

Also visiting Karim were members from the opposition -DAP who were led by their chairman Chong Chieng Jen while PKR was led by state chairman Baru Bian.