GEORGE TOWN: Illegal and untrained, groups of foreign tour guides are hoodwinking enforcement personnel by claiming they are merely taking their overseas friends around town, it was revealed.
Penang Tourist Guides Association (PTGA) president Clement Liang said due to enforcement action, these persons, referred to as “tourist touts”, now resort to lacing their tours as social ones at various spots of interest.
“They pretend that they are showing their friends around. But we can see that they are foreigners speaking to a group of foreign tourists around the heritage enclave,” he said.
Liang called for stricter enforcement to be conducted.
“I know that teams are checking but we hope that it will be done consistently,” he added.
Besides protecting the image of genuine tourist guides, Liang said tourists needed to be kept safe from such touts “who may be fleecing them.”
“They could be taken to places of no historic or touristic importance and made to buy goods and services at exorbitant prices.
“They may also be sharing urban legends or even tales as historic facts to woo tourists,” he added.
In June, The Star highlighted the harm caused by tourist touts illegally soliciting business in Penang, Melaka, Johor and Sabah.
These included taxi touts who used private cars and charged arbitrary rates, and ticket touts who resell concert and movie tickets at far higher prices.
Then there are parking touts who illegally collect money from motorists parking in public areas, with some violent incidents reported involving drivers who declined to pay up.
Former Penang Island city councillor Wong Yuee Harng, the previous alternate chairman of the council’s parking sub-committee, said multiple joint operations were conducted with the police to deal with the issue.
“Police have arrested those touts who were later charged in court. We also put up notice boards to alert the people not to pay the touts and to call us at once,” he said.
Wong, who is now Pengkalan Kota assemblyman, said it took years of constant action for Penang to become largely free of parking touts.
“We used to have parking touts organised like a syndicate.
“Now there are only very few whom we suspect are drug addicts,” he said.
Wong added that those with information on parking touts can call the Penang Island City Council’s 24/7 hotline at 04-263 7637.
According to previous news reports, more than 20 parking touts were jailed between one to 40 days and slapped with fines ranging from RM500 to RM1,800.
