Chicken wings issue: JKDM admits weakness in supervision

The Royal Malaysian Customs Department (JDKM) has admitted that apart from poor choice of location, weakness in supervision during the disposal of the chicken wings in Sibu, Sarawak recently had resulted in the local residents digging up for the disposed poultry parts.

Its director-general Datuk T Subromaniam however said the department had adhered to all the necessary procedures when conducting the disposal.

"For import of poultry, you must first comply with the veterinary import permit and, secondly, you must have a halal certificate, without this the Customs will seize the goods.

"We have complied with the disposal procedures but we did not expect people will dig as deep at 20 feet for the chickens, so probably we have failed in terms of supervision," he said after attending a Kedah JKDM Excellent Service Award presentation ceremony here, Thursday.

Earlier JKDM seized eight containers of chicken wings as there was no import permit for the goods but only three container loads were disposed of last week.

"In the Sibu case, the chicken wings were imported by a company which is non-existent, even the people mentioned do not exist... so when the goods were seized the Customs are authorised to dispose them," he said.

He said the five other containers of chicken wings would be disposed in a proper manner to prevent a recurrence of the incident.

The shipment of 81,500kg chicken wings from The Netherlands were confiscated by Customs enforcement unit from Putrajaya on Feb 23 at the Rajang Port for not having import permit.

The chicken wings were estimated to be valued at RM543,756 with duty estimated at RM108,751.

Upon hearing news on the disposal on Tuesday, local residents had gone to the site to dig out the frozen chicken wings for their own consumption and for sale.

-- BERNAMA