Agriculture and Agro-based Industry Minister Salahuddin Ayub has concurred with former minister Rais Yatim that the allowance of "lazy" MPs who failed to attend Dewan Rakyat sitting should be slashed.
He also agreed that the lawmakers should be named and shamed.
However, Salahuddin said Rais' proposal should only apply to irresponsible MPs who are absent without solid excuses.
"Yes, I agree (with what Rais had said)," he said responding to Rais' tweet earlier over the insufficient quorum in the Dewan Rakyat today which caused a delay.
"If a parliamentarian being irresponsible, deliberately play truant without substantive reasons and not debating... in these cases, I think it is appropriate for the political party to take action against the lawmaker.
"As for slashing the allowance, it depends on the parliamentary standing order," Salahuddin said.
He stressed that some of the MPs were late entering the Dewan Rakyat today because they attended a briefing earlier.
Salahuddin urged the public not to judge the Pakatan Harapan MPs due to a single incident which went viral.
The people will know the "true colour" of an MP after two to three years, he added.
Meanwhile, Salahuddin said ministers will not be able to attend the sitting tomorrow evening because of the cabinet meeting.
"We can only change the weekly cabinet meeting to Friday beginning next week.
"(One) has to understand there are many classified documents we need to go through and we cannot move these documents to Parliament," he said, adding that the deputy ministers will attend tomorrow's sitting.
Harapan ministers had drawn flak for not attending Dewan Rakyat sitting last Wednesday as they had to attend the weekly cabinet meeting. Majority of the deputy ministers were also absent.
Dewan Rakyat deputy speaker Nga Kor Ming described the large absence as inappropriate. - Mkini
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