Government sorting out overlapping tasks of ministries says Mahathir

KUALA LUMPUR: The government is still in the process of organising the agencies for placement under the relevant ministries so as to avoid overlapping of tasks, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said today.
The Prime Minister said this was because new ministries had been created and the government was still in the process of distributing tasks to these ministries.
"We are still organising the sections which will be placed under the ministries because we have new ministries and we have to distribute tasks to many ministers.
"Sometimes, there is an overlap of tasks among the ministries and we have to rectify this," he said to reporters at the Parliament Lobby.
Dr Mahathir responded thus when asked about claims that went viral on social media about the possible eventual shutdown of seven agencies under the Finance Ministry.
On another matter, Dr Mahathir said the government had yet to study the proposals from some quarters to include in the History textbooks the facts about the struggle for independence of the left-wing groups including the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM).
"We have not studied the matter. I do not know. Some quarters have made the suggestion, not us (the government).
"We have to understand what communism is. We do not want to promote communism. But, we have to know what are communism, capitalism, democracy and kleptocracy. We have to understand all these," he said.
Dr Mahathir also commented on a suggestion to have naturalised players in the national football squad and said Malaysia could make use of naturalised players to improve the declining performance of the national squad but the services of the local players must also be used.
"Nowadays, all football squads in the country have import players. It's alright to have import players but all the 11 players (of a team) should not be from other countries. Our people have to play too," he said.
The Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) had suggested recently the recruitment of naturalised players in the national squad to boost the performance of the country in the game. — Bernama