Wee spices up Dewan Rakyat debate with three eggs

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 22 (Bernama) -- Ayer Hitam Member of Parliament Datuk Seri Dr Wee Ka Siong hogged the limelight in the Dewan Rakyat today by whipping out three eggs to illustrate his arguments during a debate.

Wee, who has frequently raised the egg supply issue, produced an egg imported from India, a local egg, and an Omega egg for comparing their sizes and prices.

“In this context, I brought an egg from India which I bought for 50 sen. And here is a Malaysian egg (showing a locally produced egg) whose price is controlled, at 45 sen. We can see the difference in size. If you notice, the egg from India costing 50 sen is smaller than the Malaysian egg. This is where it is lacking.

“If you talk about Omega egg, kampung egg, it’s 76 sen. The rich can afford to buy but this is the source (showing Malaysian egg) for helping small and medium enterprises especially Malays for making cakes,” he said when interjecting Agriculture and Food Security Minister Datuk Seri Mohamad Sabu’s speech in winding up the debate on the motion of thanks for the royal address.

Wee said the government should quickly resolve the egg supply issue so that the problem of shortage of eggs would not crop up during the coming Ramadan and Aidilfitri.

Mohamad said the government would continue giving subsidies to chicken breeders and egg producers until June before reviewing the need to maintain subsidies.

He said the move to import eggs from India was a temporary measure to meet demands.

Mohamad said a Bumiputera egg producing company had told him that manpower shortage was among the factors affecting local egg production.

"This producer is capable of producing 500,000 eggs a day but it had to shut down one plant due to a lack of workers, cutting its output to only 300,000 eggs.

"With the measures taken by the government from January to March to facilitate the entry of workers (Plan on Relaxation in Hiring of Foreign Workers), we could see an increase in workers in this sector, including at the chicken farm mentioned earlier. So, the situation will improve,” he added.

-- BERNAMA