Cabinet minister Noh Omar has come to the prime minister’s defense in awarding individual taxi permits, stating the move was not a political gimmick and neither was the latter trying to copy Pakatan Rakyat’s policies.

NONE Noh ( right ), who is Agriculture and Agro-based Industry Minister, dismissed the accusation leveled against PM Najib Abdul Raza by the PKR director of strategy Rafizi Ramli yesterday as “outdated”.

He claimed that he, himself, had awarded up to 3,000 individual taxi permits to cab drivers, during his tenure as Entrepreneur and Cooperative Development minister.

“To this day, there are still taxi drivers who come to see me to express their thanks.

“His (Rafizi’s) statement that this (PM’s action) was nothing more than a political gimmick by BN, clearly deceives the rakyat,” he said.

Rafizi, he advised, should do his research first before coming out with statements that would reflect poorly on his intelligence.

Yesterday, Rafii slammed Najib as “desperate”, accusing him of ripping off Pakatan Rakyat’s policies and using them to lure taxi drivers into voting for BN in the coming general election.

He said Najib’s announcement on Sunday on the distribution of 1,000 individual taxi permits, was tantamount to an “open admission” that the economic programmes announced by the opposition were feasible and meets the people’s demands.

Pakatan, in its manifesto, has promised to directly issue permits to individual taxi drivers to encourage more "taxi entrepreneurs", while abolishing the present system of issuing permits to select companies, which then lease the taxis to the drivers.