PM believes Waytha and Maszlee are trying their best

Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad said cabinet members P Waythamoorthy and Maszlee Malik are doing the best they can.

“Yeah (I am satisfied with them), they are doing their best,” he said when asked by the media after receiving a lifetime achievement award from the Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) in Kuala Lumpur last night. 

Waythamoorthy is a minister in the Prime Ministers department in charge of Unity and Social Wellbeing while Maszlee is the Education Minister. 

Mahathir’s media advisor A Kadir Jasin recently claimed in his blog that the former had “lectured” these two ministers specifically. 

Asked about this, the premier said he had merely spoken to them. 

“I talked to them. Tak ada kuliah (there was no lecture), just talk,” he said.

Waythamoorthy had courted controversy over his address to Parliament on Putrajaya’s initial plan to ratify the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Icerd). This plan has been put on ice.

Critics had also attacked him for over his handling of the riots earlier this week involving the Sri Maha Mariamman Hindu temple in Subang Jaya. 

Maszlee (photo) has been repeatedly criticised over his many policy pronouncements, particularly over mandatory black school shoes and the use of hotel pools for swimming lessons.

Free medical services will bankrupt the country

During his speech at the MMA dinner, Mahathir remarked that the high cost of medicine was a huge burden on the federal government. 

“If the government were to give free medicine, we will soon be bankrupt,” he had said, adding that healthcare now involved many branches of medicine and costly surgeries. 

This is after the association’s president Dr Mohamed Namazie Ibrahim urged the government to reform the present healthcare financing system to make it more sustainable, and to establish a Royal Commission of Inquiry to chart the future of the sector. 

Asked afterwards, Mahathir said the government already supplies free and subsidised medicine to the rakyat. 

“We already give a lot of free medicine, we have (also) given some subsidised medicine. 

“We have a special programme for public health,” said Mahathir, who was a medical practitioner before entering politics. - Mkini