The Home Ministry unit that renews publishing permits today broke its silence over its slow processing time, claiming its officers have to read every edition and also process more than 300 applications monthly.
Pakatan Rakyat (PR) parties have lamented that the publishing and printing permits take almost a year to approve, pushing them to break the law by publishing without permits or using expired permits. There has been speculation that the government has denied permits to stop critical reports from being published.
The ministry’s Publications Control and Quranic Text secretary Datuk Zaitun Ab Samad told The Malaysian Insider that her office had plenty to handle every month, adding her staff members were not deliberately prolonging the renewal application process.
“We do not only handle the publications permits, we also handle the printing licences. We also have to study the content of the publications before granting the approvals.
“When you have more than 300 applications to go through every month, it will definitely take a while,” she said in an interview today.
She said that the ministry did not only process applications for political party organs but for all publications that required permits, including magazines, brochures, bulletins and even newsletters.
“Even Giant (hypermarket) sends us their applications. So, you can just imagine the amount of work we have to do. We are not deliberately being slow so it is not fair to blame us for that,” she said.
Zaitun explained that the renewal process of a publication permit was not as simple as merely approving each application without properly studying the content of the publication.
“We have to go through one year’s worth of content before we decide on whether to grant the approval. That is just a standard operating procedure,” she said.
Zaitun added that this proved that the ministry was not unfair when reviewing the renewal applications it would first conduct a comprehensive study of each publication to see if it had contravened the ministry’s content guidelines before making its decision.
“We have to be fair. We cannot just reject their applications by reviewing one or two months’ worth of content.
“For example, if a printing permit expires in June, we cannot just review the May editions and decide from there. We have to go through everything to decide if it had reasonably complied with the ministry’s guidelines,” she said.
Zaitun also defended the ministry’s recent clampdown on opposition party organs, and said that the government, had always been “very, very lenient” with the parties throughout the years.
She pointed out that it had always been a guideline for the party organs to only print party-related news but this had always been flouted.
“They are only supposed to be publishing on party activities. They have always known that. They knew this when they applied for permits as political party publications,” she said.
Zaitun noted that the fact that the ministry had been lenient on the rules showed that the government was not out to attack the opposition.
“For example, another rule is that they are only allowed to sell their newspapers to party members. We can enforce this but we have have chosen to just appeal to their better nature.
“This is why we have just appealed to them to stick to the guidelines,” she said.
She said that the ministry would only consider revoking publication permits as its last option.
“We do not want it to turn into a big issue so we prefer to settle it through discussion and explanation. The last option is to revoke the licences. We just hope they stick to the guidelines,” she said.
Zaitun said her office would soon contact DAP’s The Rocket management for a meeting soon to discuss its publication permit.
“We will invite them to meet with us soon,” she said but would not reveal if the ministry planned to allow the party to renew the permits for its Chinese and English editions.
The Rocket was slapped with two show-cause letters last week for the two editions when it continued printing with expired publication permits.
The permit for The Rocket’s English edition had expired last month while its Chinese edition’s permit expired last November.
DAP national publicity secretary Tony Pua however said the party had already sent its renewal application on July 10 last year.
He had also claimed that it usually takes the ministry nearly one year to process the applications.
Zaitun claimed the party had actually sent its application late to the ministry.
“They did not provide us with some documents so their applications eventually came late. However, we did not go to the press with this – we just dealt with them directly,” she said.
On PKR’s Suara Keadilan, whose printing permit too had expired last month and is pending in the hands of the ministry, Zaitun said: “It is still status quo for them. If they want to have it renewed, they can come to us and explain.”
The ministry put the renewal of Suara Keadilan’s printing permit on hold temporarily pending an explanation it had sought from PKR over several allegedly defamatory articles it had published.
The party has since replied to the ministry and is presently attempting to seek a meeting to iron out the issue.
PKR chief strategist Chua Tian Chang said the publication’s staff was still preparing the content for its next edition, pending the meeting with the ministry and with the Pakatan Rakyat leadership council.
The PR leadership decided to momentarily suspend the publications last week in order to seek an amicable solution with the ministry over the permit issue.
comments
This show how efficient is our government servants. How do you expect FDI to flow into our country if a yearly printing permit also take a year to approve. Inefficiency leads to corruption as those who cannot wait will bribe their ways to obtain it.
How come it doesn't take them a year to renew Utusan, NST or any of the other pro BN newspapers?
What nonsense to say that you have 300 applications a month to read and approve. Zaitun it is better to say that the staff is not fit at all. Renewal application takes 1 year to renew. If there are enough evidence that the publication is not in accordance to the guidelines and that these political parties had contravene the guidelines, why cant the ministry meet up with the parties concerned after they contravened such guidelines since 8 copies were given to you. Say that you do not have initiative and that the Home Mionister is even shocked to learn that it takes a year to renew the licence. I challenge you to resign and employ a private sector to run the approval. You are simply LAZY AND NOW GIVING EXCUSES.
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