Address graft issue without fear or favour, agencies urged
Corruption is a cancer that is said to be spreading in the country; corruption is like termites eating into the main pillars of the country.
KUALA LUMPUR: The Sultan of Perak, Sultan Nazrin Shah, said yesterday corruption must be addressed with determination by the various agencies responsible without fear or favour.
It is feared that failure to combat and eradicate corruption with seriousness and commitment could cripple the country and the people as a whole, he said.
“Corruption is a cancer that is said to be spreading in the country; corruption is like termites eating into the main pillars of the country.
“Misconduct must be reported without bias, without fear, without favouritism because corruption is corruption no matter who commits it,” he said at the Utusan Business Awards 2015 at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre here.
Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak’s mother Tun Rahah Mohammad Noah and Utusan Group chairman Datuk Mohamad Fatmi Che Salleh were also present at the event.
Sultan Nazrin Shah urged the Utusan Group to actively help build a nation that was corruptionfree.
He said the people must be nurtured to have an anticorruption mindset and to reject leaders who practised the disgusting act as well as educated to look upon corruption as something negative.
“Fighting corruption should become a struggle, a ‘jihad’, as it is the responsibility and obligation of every citizen of the country to
Sultan Nazrin Shah, Sultan of Perak
prevent the country from sliding into the valley of humiliation,” he said.
Sultan Nazrin Shah also said that the inaugural Utusan Business Awards should serve as a benchmark to drive and encourage companies to uphold ethical business principles and high moral values.
This included practising a sincere, transparent, honest and truthful business culture, as well as paying more attention to the environment, employee welfare, career development and training, apart from running social responsibility programmes for the community, he said.
He said the awards should also emphasise practices which respected the principles and ethics of good business conduct and legislation and not raking in profits through deception.
He said Malaysia had been internationally recognised and respected as a role model and was a preferred country for its investor- friendly environment, as mentioned by the World Bank Report 2016 which placed Malaysia among the top 20 countries to do business in.
In the same report, Malaysia was ranked 18th out of 189 countries in terms of the ease of doing business.
Sultan Nazrin Shah said the Utusan Group and its main publication Utusan Malaysia had been increasingly branded as racist by certain parties with an agenda, thus destroying the social contract upheld by the former leaders when they formulated the major policies to establish an independent nation.
However, he said, the criteria and the list of recipients of the awards presented yesterday had proven that the Utusan Group was an organisation that embraced the spirit of 1Malaysia and not one that practised a racist ideology. — Bernama