Facing bird's nest protest, Noh Omar offers lunch

Breaking away from his norm of snubbing dissent, Agriculture and Agro-based Industry Minister Noh Omar today invited to lunch protesters upset with the government's handling of the bird's nest industry.

However, with his invitation and in front of his supporters, he launched a tirade against Sekinchan state assemblyperson Ng Suee Lim, the leader of the protest group.

Some 500 protesters had turned up in front of Noh's service centre in Tanjung Karang at around 11am today, to find that the minister was hosting a Hari Raya open house for local contractors.

When contacted, Ng of the DAP, said he was surprised to find Noh Omar already waiting for them.

"We had unfurled banners to protest and then Umno representatives came up to us from across the street and asked us to send representatives to join the lunch," he said.

Once their safety was guaranteed at their request, Ng accompanied by four others went to Noh's open house tents where they handed over a memorandum to him.

A bird's nest farmer representative was handed a microphone to read out their point-by-point demand.

Loudspeaker comes in handy

"But after that, Noh took back the microphone and declared that because of us, he was forced to inform Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin that he had to be absent from the Selayang Umno representative assembly this morning.

"He then made a point-by-point rebuttal of the memorandum and accused me of politicising the matter," he said.

Ng, (left) who was later allowed to speak denied playing politics, saying that the impasse for exporting bird's nest to China had persisted for over a year and he had only recently taken up the matter when it remained unresolved.

"And then Noh became angry and took the microphone back, saying that we did not understand the problem and attacked me for exposing theprawn farm controversy against him," he said.

This led to a tense situation with minor pushing among protest representatives and Noh's supporters but some 50 police officers present there quickly stepped in.

"The police said since we have handed over the memorandum, we should leave.

"We are thankful that Noh was willing to wait for us and meet us but we are upset at the way he treated us and raised his voice at us," he said.

When diplomacy, politics don't mix

The bird's nest industry was hit hard when China halted imports of Malaysian bird's nest last year upon discovering that the level of nitrite in the products was over its legal limit.

China also has imposed a rule on the bird's nest, requiring some form of identification system verifying that they were genuinely from Malaysia and not transited from other countries.

Following this, the government introduced radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, sparking fierce opposition from birds' nest farmers.

The farmers claim that the RFID system was too costly and contracted to crony companies for implementation.

Some 800 bird's nest farmers had on July 22 protested over the matter and are expected to hold another in Penang tomorrow.