Malaysian maritime always strives to improve capability to face foreign threats: D-G

KUANTAN: The Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (Malaysian Maritime) always strives to improve the capability of its personnel to tackle foreign threats, including from military-trained foreign fishermen encroaching into Malaysian waters.
Its director-general, Maritime Admiral Datuk Seri Ahmad Puzi Ab Kahar said among the efforts taken for the purpose were by sending its staff to attend language courses and undergo trainings to develop their skills to intercept information sent to or by those fishermen to certain quarters.
"Our staff must not only have good command of Malay and English languages, but must also be multilingual. So, we must train our staff to understand Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Thai and Myanmar languages.
"If we want our operations to be based on information, then we also have to have the ability to intercept, understand and analyse the information."
He said this to reporters after opening the International Advanced Boarding Officer's Course (Iaboc) 2017 at the Sultan Ahmad Shah (Amsas) Maritime Academy here today.
Ahmad Puzi said this in response to Minister in the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Shahidan Kassim's remark that there was truth to media reports that foreign fishermen who aggressively encroached into Malaysian waters last year, had military training.
The minister was also quoted as saying that the claim was further strengthen by the aggressive approach of the group of 150 boats escorted by a Coast Guard patrol boat, causing them to even brazenly collide with the Malaysian enforcement boats. — Bernama