LANGKAWI: Marine police expanding. Marine police continue to expand some four years after it returned to the task of overseeing the security in Malaysian maritime area.
It is getting new personnel, officers and other ranks, who had passed out from training academies as well as new boats.Marine police commander Senior Assistant Commissioner Mohd Yusoff Mamat said this was the first time in four years the unit was getting new personnel directly after qualifying as police personnel.
With the new personnel they hoped to expand its commando qualified Special Forces unit, Ungerin.
There are two Ungerin units operating, one in Port Klang and the other in Tawau. There was seven Ungerin previously at all Marine police units but it shrunk to two since 2014.
Mohd Yusoff said they hoped to expand the two Ungerin units qualifying up to 100 new operators. The operators are selected and qualified by the VAT 69, the police premier commando unit.
As for assets, he said the unit is getting two new 17 meter fast interceptor craft from Gading Marine, this July.
Two of the boats are already operational, he added. Marine Police, Mohd Yusoff said in the aftermath of the Lahad Datu incident, is authorised to patrol up to the Malaysian EEZ though they don’t do so currently as the biggest patrol boat they have, 25 meter PA class was not equipped for long distance mission.
Asked whether there was any plans by the Home Ministry to merge the Marine Police and the Malaysian Coast Guard, Mohd Yusoff said he was not aware of any plans.
Personally, he said he think it would be better if the coast guard be folded into the Marine Police as they have been much better in protecting the country’s maritime security interests.
-Malaysian Defence
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That ASP is just protecting his turf. The logical thing to do is to fold marine police into MMEA, not the other way round.
The police even if they can patrol the EEZ, has no jurisdiction there as it is the international waters, not malaysian waters. That is why cruise ships can open their casino past 12nm limit.
“Personally, he said he think it would be better if the coast guard be folded into the Marine Police as they have been much better in protecting the country’s maritime security interests.”
so the saga continue….
For me both can exist and supoort each other organically. Just like you’d waste the navy’s resource to task them to conduct eez patrol, it’s also a waste of mmea’s resource to task them to patrol water villages and ports. More important is for them to not have so many overlapping tasks
It’s just inter-agency rivalry with the police not comprehending where their jurisdiction ends and another agency’s begins. The police should be taught their national set-up is ridiculously wobbly. We should have separate federal police and state police set-ups like in Australia. Let the states bear part of the burden for security. After all, the police is not the army