KUALA LUMPUR, June 9 — PKR’s Alor Setar MP Gooi Hsiao Leung has filed an urgent motion in the Dewan Rakyat to discuss the widespread corruption of enforcement officials at the country’s borders as alleged by a police intelligence official.
In a copy of his filing made yesterday, the federal opposition lawmaker demanded Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi explain what he described as the government’s failure to act on the rampant corruption claim by a police Special Branch (SB) officer as reported in a local daily last week.
Gooi has previously called Zahid to task over the minister’s immediate response to the police intelligence findings, made amid the exhumation of several mass graves of suspected victims of human trafficking rings in the northern state of Perlis bordering Thailand.
On June 3, News Straits Times cited an unnamed police SB source as claiming that 80 per cent of Malaysian law enforcement officers manning the country’s borders were engaged in corruption, with some purportedly also in on the smuggling syndicates’ payroll instead of merely taking bribes.
Zahid was quoted in the same report as saying that he will seek Cabinet approval to get the army to take over all security operations along Malaysia’s borders while pledging that efforts will be made to put an end to “institutionalised corruption, where these law enforcement officers know the syndicate members well”.
Local law enforcement officers have been suspected for alleged involvement in human trafficking activities in northern Malaysia and southern Thailand, some were subsequently arrested.
The recent discovery in Padang Besar, Perlis of nearly 140 mass graves and nearly 30 suspected people smuggling camps came after repeated denials of their existence by government officials.
