Kok gets an earful from Wee over MyEG-race remark

PETALING JAYA: MCA deputy president Datuk Dr Wee Ka Siong has hit out at DAP’s Teresa Kok for claiming that he had equated MyEG with the issue of race.

Saying he was taken aback by Kok’s interpretation of a speech he had made in Muar, Dr Wee stressed that he had made no such comparison.

“She had twisted my words and her sole purpose was to attack the Government and MyEG and turning the Chinese against MCA,” said Dr Wee, who is Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, in a statement.

An online news portal quoted Kok, the Seputeh MP, as saying that Dr Wee had claimed in his speech that the MyEG system was crucial in monitoring the number of foreign workers in the country, which had already exceeded the Indian population and would exceed the Chinese too if left unchecked.

The online report said that Kok accused Wee of “resorting to fear” as a means of getting public acceptance of the MyEG system.

Wee clarified that his speech at the MCA-hosted Chinese New Year dinner was to explain that MCA had taken up the grievances of employers regarding the MyEG system and discussed them in the Cabinet.

“While MCA always supports e-government, it is our position that employers should not be burdened by being compelled to use MyEG.

“Employers must be given the option to renew their foreign workers’ permit over-the-counter or online via MyEG,” Dr Wee said.

“I then separately addressed the issue of foreign workers in my speech,” he said.

He said legal foreign workers should not be barred from working in the country so as not to impair economic growth but there was a need to strike a balance.

He said government statistics showed there were more than four million foreign workers in Malaysia – both legal and illegal ones - and that the foreign worker population in Malaysia had surpassed the number of Malaysian Indians.

“Taking into account these figures, I explained that the Government should regulate and monitor the numbers and whereabouts of foreign workers in Malaysia,” he said.

“I said in my speech that if the Government did not control the number of foreign workers, especially the illegal ones, their continued growth in numbers might eventually see them outnumbering the Malaysian Chinese population, which might pose a security threat.”

He questioned how Kok was able to conclude, based on his speech, that he had made a correlation between MyEG and race.