KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 21 ― Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) will stay firm over its decision to fully handle the 2019 Ramadan Bazaar operations despite protests from the traders.

Federal Territories Minister Khalid Samad said that he believed the new policy would provide fair opportunities to all traders as well as eliminating the monopoly and "Ali Baba” culture in the industry.

"Many of the traders are protesting because the new policy will break the existing networking they had with the previous organisers.

They usually controlled the lots, but the major concern is because we found out that there were many cases of lot rental rate hikes,” he told reporters after witnessing the signing of the TRX Common Estate Agreement here today.

When asked on how much the lot rental rate price was increased, Khalid said:

"In some cases, they rent it out for about RM30,000 per lot. That was not what DBKL was charging. With us, it is normally around RM500.

"It does not involve just one party, it goes through a few people, like A will rent it to B and B will rent it to C,” he explained.

Khalid added that the new online licence application had also enabled them to identify and give the opportunity to certain minority groups, such as persons with disability (OKU) and single mothers.

Prior to this, media reported that the DBKL had opened its online licence application for this year’s Ramadan Bazaar on February 15 in order to fully handled the bazaar without intervention by outside organisers, such as NGOs, associations or individuals.

The new system sparked dissatisfaction among the traders who wanted the traditional operations of Ramadan Bazaar to be retained. ― Bernama