Communications and Multimedia Minister Salleh Said Keruak should focus on addressing the country's poor internet infrastructure instead of being chief propagandist for Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak.
DAP supremo Lim Kit Siang said this in reference to the release of the State of the Internet Report by Akamai Technologies Inc for the second quarter of 2015.
The report showed Malaysia's average internet speed improved by 17 percent year-on-year to 5.0 Mbps but was still ranked at 70th, five places behind Sri Lanka, which registered a 50 percent improvement to at 5.3Mbps.
"One would have expected Salleh to be very occupied with blueprints, announcements, statements or even blogs as to how Malaysia is to return to the front-line of information technology powers...but Salleh has been conspicuously unconcerned about Malaysia’s poor Internet infrastructure.
"Salleh appeared to be only interested in his blog and Facebook, busy with his new toy and cabinet assignment to be Najib’s chief propagandist to fight the prime minister’s political survival battle.
"In the past three days, Salleh (photo) had penned at least four blog pieces, defending Najib and attacking in particular former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad," said Lim in a statement today.
The Gelang Patah MP added if the prime minister needed someone to fight his propaganda war, he should have appointed Salleh as chief propagandist instead of communications and multimedia minister.
"Malaysia needs a suitable person to be minister for communications and multimedia, who has the understanding and passion to make Malaysia an information technology power and leverage the powers of information technology for Malaysia to become a fully developed nation.
"The communications and multimedia minister should be tasked with the responsibility to fully develop the nation’s communications and multimedia infrastructure, and not to be solely concerned about Najib’s political survival whose chief ministerial responsibility is to write blogs and Facebook pieces in praise of Najib," he said.
According to the State of the Internet Report Q2 2015, Malaysia's average internet speed also lagged behind several other countries in the region.
Among them are Australia (7.8Mbps), New Zealand (8.4 Mbps), Thailand (8.6 Mbps), Taiwan (10.6 Mbps), Singapore (12.7 Mbps), Japan (16.3 Mbps), Hong Kong (17 Mbps) and South Korea (23.1 Mbps).
However, Malaysia was ahead of China (3.4Mbps), Vietnam (3.3Mbps), Phillippines (3.1Mbps), Indonesia (2.4Mbps) and India (2.4 Mbps).
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