LETTER | Stricter enforcement on migrants running businesses needed

LETTER | In the last few years, new laws have been enacted by our elected representatives or otherwise changing governments. The new lawmakers of the governments were fond of enacting laws when they were faced with predicaments.

The latest is that the government is mulling an anti-Ali Baba law to curb locals from renting out their business licences to migrants. The migrants had operated their business by storm in the last few years and have monopolised several commercial areas in Kuala Lumpur.

When I browsed through the website, I was amazed at the number of laws enacted by our country. In the last count in 2016, there were a total of 774 Acts published under the series of Laws of Malaysia. To support the implementation of the Acts, there would be orders, rules, regulations, and by-laws.

Most of the legislation was passed to address problems in various sectors such as businesses, healthcare, public health, water quality, labours etc. I am sure if the newly elected lawmakers take time to go through existing laws by sectors, they may be able to find legislation they could use to handle migrants operating businesses. The necessity for new laws may not arise.

The problem is each government agency promulgates legislation pertaining to the duties and responsibilities of their agency. During enforcement, their agents only looked for contraventions to their laws and not the contraventions to laws governed by other agencies. In this case, concurrent enforcement by multiple agencies could be more effective.

It is my opinion that our country has adequate laws to address migrant Ali-Baba business issues. What is lacking is their enforcement. More strict enforcement of the laws is required. The authorities must come down hard on migrants doing business or the locals who rent their business licences.

Rent-seeking or Ali Baba culture in the bigger context, involves manipulating public policy or economic conditions to gain profits without doing any real work or contribution to the economy.

The Ali Baba culture has been around the country for a very long time. It has been entrenched in government processes such as procurement, licensing, permits, and quota allocation, as well as the distribution of subsidies and grants to name a few.

Breaking rent-seeking behaviour is not going to be easy unless the government has a strong political will to work out effective mechanisms and regulations to stem this unhealthy, unproductive, and destructive behaviour.

Promulgation of legislation is inevitable. I envisage more legislation would be introduced in the future due to technological advancement. An imminent one is the Act and regulations for artificial intelligence, AI.

To make the legislation more effective, the government should promote active public participation to ensure comprehensive legislation for successful implementation. Most countries realise the importance of public participation in legislation development since this will instil a sense of belonging and buy-in from the public.

There was obviously no public participation in the drafting of the Anti-Hopping law, which contained glaring loopholes favouring politicians. Such glaring oversights could be prevented if there were public participation.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.