Despite Safest City Tag Chow Frets Over Penang S Place In Drug Trade

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Penang chief minister Chow Kon Yeow handing out mandarins to guests at his Chinese New Year open house at the Setia Spice Arena today. (Johnshen Lee pic)
GEORGE TOWN: Chief minister Chow Kon Yeow said while he is grateful Penang has been recognised as the safest state in the country, he remains concerned over the state being used as a transshipment hub for illicit drugs.
Chow said Penang’s vast waters and its proximity to Thailand made the island a “natural” transit point for drugs and other contraband.
“For many years, serious crimes and robberies have been on the downtrend and under control.
“But we remain a centre for drug trafficking from the north, through land and sea, and the drugs are then transferred to other places,” he told reporters when met at his Chinese New Year open house here.
It was reported earlier this week that Numbeo, an international statistics firm, had named Penang the safest city in Malaysia, beating other big cities such as Kuala Lumpur.
According to the latest Numbeo rankings, Penang scored 69.7 and ranked 77th in the world, making it the city with the lowest crime rate among five major cities in Malaysia.
On a related note, Chow said the state government was doubling the number of closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras in the state. Seberang Perai will get more than 1,000 cameras, which would be installed in the next two years to deter crime.
The Penang 2030 blueprint calls for at least 5,000 CCTV cameras to be installed by 2030. As of last November, 27% of the target had been achieved.
Last year, 3,501 crimes were committed between January and October, with the northeast district, where George Town is located, topping the list with 1,094 cases, according to police statistics presented in the Penang state assembly.
Of the total, 787 were violent crimes and 2,714 were property crimes across the state. - FMT

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