The deputy prime minister's daughter, Nurulhidayah Ahmad Zahid, should stop commenting on the foreign workers issue because she does not represent the government, an NGO says.
Small and Medium Scale Entrepreneurs Alliance of Malaysia (Ikhlas) president Mohd Ridzuan Abdullah said Nurulhidayah's remarks could also adversely affect Umno.
"She does not represent the government, so it is best she shut her mouth and sit down quietly.
"Her father is a politician. She shouldn't ruin the party's image. Be quiet. You have made enough for yourself, so be quiet and stop talking too much," he told reporters today.
Mohd Ridzuan said Ikhlas was a 'pro-government NGO' but would speak out if an issue affected the majority.
Nurulhidayah had expressed her views on the foreign worker issue after being goaded by netizens to take up a low-paying blue-collar job following her father Ahmad Zahid Hamidi's challenge that local youths do so if they did not want migrant workers in Malaysia.
Zahid said this in response to the public outcry that followed after Putrajaya and Dhaka signed an agreement to allow even more general workers into Malaysia.
There are 1.5 million workers in the Bangladesh database who can now apply for jobs in Malaysia.
Nurulhidayah said she, too, had worked as a waitress when she was in school and only made RM1,700 a month in her first job after graduating from university.
She said she was saying this to show that she was not an 'elite' as accused and also told her critics that she would wait for them to seek forgiveness from her in the afterlife.
She also defended her father's statement, saying that Malaysians today were "lazy" compared to the 1970s.
Ikhlas earlier slammed Zahid for issuing the challenge and demanded the government impose industry-based floor wage and better welfare for blue-collar jobs, to attract local workers.
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