Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi has chosen to side step Inspector-General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar's "middle path" controversy.

Quizzed twice by a Malaysiakini reporter on this during a press conference, the minister declined to comment, beyond saying: "Not today."

Zahid then ended the press conference and walked away.

Khalid ( right ) had courted a firestorm of criticism after he stated that the police would remain neutral in interfaith custody disputes.

Describing it as a "fair" solution, Khalid said in cases where there are conflicting syariah and civil court judgments, the police would place the children in childcare centres.

Earlier, DAP's Ipoh Barat MP M Kulasegaran said Zahid, who oversees the police, cannot remain silent on this matter.

Advanced security system

On other matter, the home minister announced that the Immigration Department, with the assistance of the police force, would collaborate with Interpol in accessing the Lost and Stolen Travel Document (LSTD) system.

This follows the case of two Iranians boarding the missing Flight MH370 on March 8, using stolen passports.

Zahid said the Immigration Department would be upgrading its security system with passport scanners to identify the authenticity of passports and a facial recognition system to tackle impersonators.

"We want to avoid what happened in the MH370 incident," he told reporters at a briefing session at KLIA2 today.

In a bid to ease congestion due to passenger crowds at the new airport, Zahid said, employers will from now have to pick up their foreign workers from the terminal within 24 hours - or their security bonds would be liquidated.

"Those (employers) who fail to do so, have to bear the cost of sending the workers back to their respective countries and they will be blacklisted as well," he said.

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