Despite the massive promotional exercise, deputy minister T Murugiah says the concept is yet to be embraced by the people.

Despite the massive promotional exercise, deputy minister T Murugiah says the concept is yet to be embraced by the people.

KUALA LUMPUR: The government has spent RM38 million to promote the 1Malaysia concept in 2010, Parliament was told today.

“However, to say that this concept has been fully accepted and we have reached our target… (well) we have yet to do so,” Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, T Murugiah, said.

“We have organised more than 191,709 promotional activities on the 1Malaysia slogan,” he said in response to a supplementary question by Mohamad Aziz (Sri Gading-BN).

Mohamad had asked how far the 1Malaysia concept, the brainchild of Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak introduced in 2009, has resonated with Malaysians.

Murugiah said the promotional activities involved 6,234,106 participants and were related to security, inter-faith, patriotism and other exercises to promote the concept.

The matter cropped up when Salahuddin Ayub (Kubang Kerian-PAS) had asked about efforts to improve racial unity and how it could be be solved through the 1Malaysia slogan.

Murugiah said while the reception to it has been good, there were still thorny issues such as Interlok and the National Civics Bureau (BTN) courses which needed to be addressed.

Interlok, the Form Five compulsory textbook, sparked outrage for its racial stereotyping and the use of derogatory words and the BTN for indoctrinating racial bias.

Murugiah said the government has a system to deal with all these problems where representatives from each race have been called in for dialogues and mediation. - FMT