Employees wearing hijab at hotels shouldn't be a problem: MAH

ALOR STAR: It shouldn't be a problem if hotel employees want to wear hijab or tudung at their workplace as long as it doesn't compromise the service to the customer, said Kedah-Perlis Malaysian Association of Hotels (MAH) chairman Eugene Dass.
He however said that associations cannot impose or instruct hotels on whether their employees can wear hijab or not.
"In Kedah and Perlis we don't have issue on that, and if hotels have an in-house policy, we would not know.
"It shouldn't be a problem, but I cannot speak for the hotels, so far we dont have that kind of problem," he told theSun when met at the state capital recently.
Dass said MAH itself has asked for the names of the hotels, but until today no one knows which were the hotels that imposed a ban on Muslim women from wearing a hijab as part of their in house "standard grooming" policy.
He however added that if there are hotels imposing on their employees due to their in house regulations, it might be because they are international hotels that might be follow their old way of doing things.
He cited Raffles Hotel and E&O Hotels in days past when the reception desk at the hotel lobby could only be staffed by a male, and women were forbidden from the position.
Last month, it was reported that the Human Resources Ministry found that 13 out of 88 hotels in Peninsular Malaysia have denied women from wearing the hijab (headscarf), according to their "standard grooming" policy.
Minister Datuk Seri Richard Riot of the Manpower Department has advised the said hotels to rectify the matter and lift the ban.