Why so difficult for Nazri to come here to explain about tax, Karim asked

August 16, 2017

KUCHING: The Sarawak and Sabah Governments deserve an explanation from Tourism and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz on the mechanism on how the tourism tax is to be shared, said Tourism, Arts, Culture, Youth and Sports Minister Datuk Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah.

“Is it so difficult for Nazri to go to Sabah and Sarawak and explain the mechanism of how this tourism tax is to be shared? He is most welcome to visit Sarawak to do it,” he told The Borneo Post today.

Abdul Karim said, by right, Nazri should explain to the two state governments or at least to their chief ministers as to why they are being treated ‘on par’ with the other states when it comes to division of the proceed of the tourism tax.

He stressed that Nazri cannot treat and look at the Sarawak and Sabah the same way he treats and looks at the other states in Malaysia.

Abdul Karim pointed out that Sarawak and Sabah have a cause to be concerned because to them, tourism is a subject matter which they deem as neither in the Federal List nor State List when the Malaysia Agreement was penned in 1963.

Thus, he said tourism should be treated as in the ‘Residual list’ and matters in the Residual list are deem as state matters.

“It was only in 1994 that tourism suddenly appeared in the Ninth Schedule of the Federal Constitution, which treated it as a Federal matter but this insertion in 1994 had never been referred to or gotten the endorsement of the two state governments. This led to Sarawak treating it as a matter that the federal government had taken away from the state.”

Abdul Karim was responding to the call by Nazri yesterday for the governments of Sarawak and Sabah to speak directly to him if they have any misgivings about the distribution of the tourism tax.

Nazri said he has yet to be approached by either state government leaders although their remarks have been reported.

Last month, Nazri said that his ministry planned to return RM1 for every RM10 in tax per room per night collected to the state governments for the purpose of promoting tourism, which was in contrary with his previous statement that the revenue from the tax would be shared equally between Sarawak, Sabah and Peninsular Malaysia.

This sudden reduction from about 30 per cent to just 10 per cent in the tourism tax revenue sharing was deemed unacceptable to the Sarawak and Sabah Governments as they believed that both states should be given a more equitable share of the tourism tax as both states had been carrying their own tourism promotion over the years at their own costs. -TheBorneoPost