Culinary hotspot: Locals and holiday makers enjoying local hawker delights in Gurney Drive, Penang.
GEORGE TOWN: The Penang Government’s move to ban foreigners from being the main cooks of local hawker fare effective Jan 1, 2016, received the thumbs up from the majority of hawkers and related associations.
Penang Consumer Protection Association president K. Koris Atan said he supported the effort and urged the state government to immediately enforce the ban.
“Why does the state need to give a grace period? When the foreigners are brought into the country to work, they are categorised as cleaners, construction workers or even cooks.
“The authorities must conduct regular checks and penalise those who disobey the ban,” he said when contacted yesterday.
Penang Hawkers Association chairman Lam Tong Ying also supported the ban.
“Penang is a preferred destination when it comes to hawker food. Tourists from all around the world travel to Penang for its local food so we must maintain the standard.
“The ban will help maintain the standard of our local food, unlike in Kuala Lumpur where foreigners are mainly the cooks,” he said.
Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng said the move was to preserve the authenticity of the state’s local flavours.
Lim added that all hawkers operating at coffee shops, hawker complexes, shopping mall food courts and roadside stalls should do away with employing foreigners as their main cooks and ensure that “only locals or Malaysian citizens” cooked their fare.
“Foreigners can still be hired to do the washing, handle orders or assist in preparing ingredients, but not to do the cooking,” he told a press conference in Komtar yesterday.
Lim said hawkers would be given a one-year grace period starting from Jan 1 next year, to enable them to adjust to the new regulation.
“This period is also to enable the Penang and Seberang Prai municipal councils the time to study and refine the implementation of this new regulation,” he added.
He said the regulation was to maintain and ensure that the unique tastes and flavours of local food would be retained to safeguard Penang’s food heritage, and to help ensure that foreigners would not take over Penang’s hawker food business.
Lim also said the local authorities would issue special stickers for hawkers to display at their stalls to prove that their food is authentically cooked by locals, and not foreigners.
“Most visitors would not want to come to Penang to taste food cooked by foreigners. Only when you maintain the original taste of flavours can you feel the warmth of Penang.”
State Local Government, Traffic Management and Flood Mitigation Committee chairman Chow Kon Yeow said a survey conducted by the Penang Municipal Council (MPPP) from July 25 to Aug 31 on the proposal to ban foreigners from cooking local fare saw 14,810 respondents, where 55.85% were Penangites while the rest were from other states or countries.
“From the survey on the island, we found that 87.45% were in favour that local fare should be cooked by the locals while 86.02% also agreed that the licences of the hawkers should be revoked if foreigners are employed to cook,” he said.
Chow said the same survey conducted by the Seberang Prai Municipal Council (MPSP) involving 1,591 respondents found that 85.3% agreed to the move, and 85.0% agreed that hawkers who failed to comply should have their licences revoked.
Lim had first made the proposal in July and it met with mixed reaction from the public.
Renowned Malaysian celebrity chef Datuk Redzuawan Ismail, better known as Chef Wan, had called the proposal ridiculous, saying that such a strange ruling would only serve to make Malaysia the laughing stock in the eyes of the world.
