The WHO reported the Covid-19 outbreak infected 486,761,597 people, involving 6,142,735 deaths worldwide as of 1 April 2022. This contagious disease has spread rapidly throughout the world, including Malaysia. Since the outbreak in Malaysia began in March 2020, the Movement Control Order (MCO) has been implemented nationwide, leaving a significant impact on its citizens, non-citizens, as well as refugees. There is some exploitation of refugees, where enforcement officers are targeting them for criminal offences. Stakeholders claimed the Malaysian government did not provide any assistance to refugees during the pandemic, including health care and economy. This article examines Malaysia’s responsibilities as a host country to refugees during the Covid-19 outbreak. The Malaysian government is proposed to continuously support refugees on humanitarian grounds based on the country’s economic development capabilities. This paper will look into the current situation of the Refugees in Malaysia; discuss the challenges that the Refugees in Malaysia are facing; analyse the legal framework governing the status of refugees; and check the responsibility Malaysia should assume as a host country.

On March 18, 2020, Malaysian Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin declared the nationwide enforcement of the Movement Control Order to curb the spread of COVID-19. In September 2020, Malaysia entered the third wave of the outbreak. Active cases rose from 60 to more than 13,000. The government’s Ops Benteng stops illegal migrants, who are at high risk of bringing COVID-19 into Malaysia. This includes illegal Rohingya migrants, who enter Malaysia to flee persecution in their home country, Myanmar. There are approximately 150,000 Rohingya migrants in Malaysia and more are expected. This article examines the main reason behind the influx of Rohingya illegal migrants and discusses whether the Malaysian government should tighten its borders to safeguard against COVID-19. The government must prioritise its own citizens over the Rohingyas; the responsibility of managing this humanitarian disaster should be shared with other nations, particularly those party to the United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees 1951.

목적 : 중국, 홍콩, 말레이시아, 호주, 독일 및 미국의 optometry 관련 제도를 조사하고 분석하여 대한민국 안경사 제도 개선 방안에 참고가 되고자 하였다. 방법 : 구글스칼라(Google Scholar), 학술연구정보서비스(RISS), 코리아스칼라(Korea Scholar) 및 디비피아 (DBpia)를 통해 중국, 홍콩, 말레이시아, 호주, 독일 및 미국의 optometry 관련 정보를 검색하고 수집하였다. 결과 : 홍콩, 호주 및 미국은 optometrist 및 ophthalmic dispenser 업무를 명확하게 구분하여 운영하고 있 으며, 독일은 수공업 규정을 따르며 세계화에 맞춰 optometrist로 직종을 추가하였다. 말레이시아는 비교적 최근에 optometrist 제도를 도입하였으며, 홍콩, 호주 및 미국과 유사한 업무 범위를 가진다. 중국은 험광원 및 정배 공을 등급별로 구분하였으나, 한국과 유사하게 비정시의 진단 및 처치는 수행할 수 없는 것으로 나타났다. 결론 : 중국, 홍콩, 말레이시아, 호주, 독일 및 미국의 optometry 제도에서 조사 및 분석된 시사점을 통해 대 한민국 안경사의 전문성 강화와 시대적 상황에 부합되는 제도 개선 방향이 제시되었다고 생각된다.

1. 말레이시아는 젖소 유전자원 개선을 위해 다수의 가축 사육 프로젝트를 지원해오고 있다. 그러나 소비자의 유제품 수요가 빠르게 늘어나는 상황에서 이를 충족시키기 위해 유전자 원과 유제품을 수입에 의존하고 있는 상황이다. 2. 이는 낙농산업 분야에서의 낮은 젖소 번식능력과 개체 수, 비구조화된 번식체계, 수입의존 유전자원, 수익성 있는 낙농산업 모델 부재, 현대적인 유전육종기술 한계에 기인한다고 볼 수 있다. 3. 말레이시아는 향후 정책지원을 통해 낙농산업의 효율성 향상을 진행할 것으로 전망되며, 이러한 상황 속에서 우리나라의 우수한 낙농 유전자원 수출을 위해서는 현지 낙농산업 현황과 검역절차에 대한 이해가 필요하다. 4. 말레이시아 젖소정액 검역 통관을 위해서는 포괄적인 검역조건 대응으로 협의를 통한 검역조건 간소화가 필요하며, 수출 지속성 제고를 위해 국제협력사업과의 연계, 현지 에이전트 발굴을 통한 적극적인 참여 유도, 한류 등을 활용한 현지 홍보활동 방안이 있다.

Marina is a small port located along a coastline that provides facilities and services for small boats and yachts. The main facilities of marina are pontoon, freshwater, and power supplies. Marina also provides service for boat maintenance and service, and security. In Malaysia, the marina is operated by private companies and Marine Department Malaysia. All the marinas in Malaysia provide the same facilities and services, however they are not operating at the same level. Few marinas had closed their operation due to insufficient number of boats arrived to their marina. The reason of this issue is lack of study about marina operation and management in Malaysia. Further study should be done in this field to overcome this issue and increased the growth of economy for marina. Therefore, the objective of this study to determine the factors to establish a marina in Malaysia and to identify the reason certain marina less performed. This research focused on the marina operators on the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia. The literature review was used to identify the factors to establish a marina. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) approach was used to analyse the data. This method had ranked the crucial factors from the highest to the lowest percentage. Four main criteria to establish a marina had been identified, namely locations, facilities, services, and promotion. Besides that, there also the sub-criteria for all the main factor to describe it. All the identified factors had been analysed to find the most important factor. The consolidate result showed that geography, security, berthing, purpose, boat chandlery and boat service are the highest percentage among other factors. It concludes that it is the most important factor to establish a marina. These results can be used to improve the operation of marina in Malaysia by focusing on these aforementioned factors.

The issue of dependency on foreign seafarers in Malaysia has been highlighted in the Malaysia Shipping Master Plan 2017–2022, whereby the number of foreign seafarers on Malaysian ships has been constantly high up to 17,000. A total of 6,000 Certificates of Recognition are issued by the Marine Department annually, which bring a great loss to both economy and career opportunities locally. A policy to reduce dependency on foreign seafarers has been implemented in 2018 as a goal to revitalize shipping for a stronger Malaysian economy. Conflicting priorities between shipping industries and local seafarers while trying to find the best solution to ensure that development efforts are not jeopardized have been a major challenge to the government of Malaysia. This article examines various issues and challenges in managing Malaysia’s dependency on foreign seafarers by using a qualitative research approach. Key stakeholders have been identified through purposive sampling, and face-to-face in-depth interviews have been conducted to identify and understand the issues and challenges faced. The findings show that there are pressing needs to improve maritime governance in Malaysia, especially on system, education, and policy implementation. Fragmented governance arrangements and vague policies are affecting the formulation of effective solutions. It is also argued that an effective and clear management is crucial to reduce dependency on foreign seafarers, as only then can Malaysia’s shipping development efforts be enhanced.

Bilateral relationships between Malaysia and Indonesia have always been cordial, augmented largely by their shared ethno-cultural, value and religious affinity. Cooperation and collaboration initiatives and arrangement between the two countries are well-established in various fields, ranging from security, economic and trade, health to education. However, these friendly bilateral relationships have been occasionally marred by diplomatic frictions and protests arising from their disputes over overlapping claims to maritime territory and boundary. Among the most notable, intractable on-going maritime territorial and boundary disputes between the two countries occur in the Malacca Straits. In resolving these particularly dispute, diplomatic negotiation has been the most common and if not, the only dispute resolution mechanism adopted by the two countries. What make the scope of this study departs from the existing literature is the focus placed on examining the process of diplomatic negotiations between Malaysia and Indonesia for amicable resolution of the disputes. Diplomatic negotiation is arguably the preferred method to delimit contested maritime boundaries as it has its own advantages compare to other alternative peaceful methods. This qualitative study uses content analysis approach to investigate and appraise the background and process of diplomatic negotiation between Malaysia and Indonesia to reach final settlement of their territorial area and boundary disputes in the Malacca Straits. In analyzing the case, the theoretical tools used are negotiation theory, and bilateral theory. The selected respondents for this study are comprised of experts and practitioners attached to government agencies such as Maritime Malaysia Enforcement Agency and Institute Diplomacy and Foreign Relation. Then, content analysis is applied to the coding process. The research finding reveal that the status of diplomatic negotiation between the government of Malaysia and Indonesia are still ongoing, with the immediate final resolution of the disputes remains to be seen. The contribution of this study lies in providing the strong facts and the real status about territorial dispute at Strait of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia and also the process of diplomatic negotiation between Malaysia and Indonesia in settlement the territorial dispute at Strait of Malacca.

Systematic literature reviews (SLR) are very important to track the extent to which studies related to the formulation of Halal Catering on board have been previously studied by previous scholars. Therefore, the SLR study requires a clear and detailed understanding concerning the study direction for each selected article by analyzing the scope of the study and its dimensions as the main emphasis whether it has been discussed by any previous scholar or otherwise. Through the basis of the analysis of literature reviews will enable the specific detection of the title of the study. Even SLR analysis is also able to compare in terms of the year the article was published by comparing the differences in scope and dimensions of each article by selected scholars referred to 16 scholars from the year 2012 until 2017. Regards to methodology, SLR emphasised into five stages such as i) Time Frame, ii) Selection of a database, iii) Journal selection, iv) Article selection and v) Literature review analysis. Analysis, discussion, and findings will be focusing on the scope, dimensions, and years of studies by using figures, tables as facilitators of analysis and findings. Hence, the role of Halal institutions will be able to assess its ability to form halal rules with the involvement of stakeholders and the scope that has been affected in detail.

The formulation of Halal and Catering Regulation on board is a new draft proposal in shipping industry in the nation to ensure Muslim seafarers will be protected under social welfare. Currently, there are no regulations in place regarding the formulation of provision of Halal and Catering which have been enforced by several authorities at different sector in the nation. However, Halal JAKIM is an expert and focal point with the right to issue Halal certification not only in this nation but globally. The main objective of the study was to form a Halal committee on board for the co-ordination of responsibilities between the agencies, and the second objective was to establish the Halal and Catering Regulations on the merchant vessel for the Malaysian flag. The problem is that seafarers feel insecure about the preparation of halal food and no regulations have been issued to date. In fact, this study requires Qualitative methods because several actions related to the Halal-Toyibban Policy and food preparation rules should be obtained through closed-ended interviews with Halal regulatory experts, ship-owners, and selected stakeholders. Therefore, the analytical process will refer to the use of transmitted transitions from oral to text through the coding system in facilitate the content analysis process; and further to the level of discussion and findings. Ship-owners should ratify the Halal and Catering Regulations once they are enacted. The results of this study are expected to formulate the framework for the Halal and Catering Committee involving the agency by reference to interdependent theory. The second finding was to formulate a draft of the Halal and Catering Regulations on the Malaysian merchant vessel by reference to the application of benchmarking theory. Finally, this study will benefit the Muslim seafarer with the cooperation of the ship-owner and the relevant government agencies.

Malaysia announced to reduce emission during the 15th Conference of Parties in Copenhagen 2009 by 6th Malaysia Prime Minister YAB Dato’ Sri Mohd Najib Tun Abdul Razak. While, one of the major energy consumption and emission producers are port systems. Therefore, port must minimise emission and pollution, to become green and environmental friendly. Thus, this study looked for the external environmental factors that influencing port become green. The external environmental factors determined using PESTEL analysis; there are political, economic, social, technology, environment, and legal. Next, the priority dominant external environmental for main factors and sub-factors identified using AHP analysis (Analytic Hierarchy Process). Questionnaires used to collect data from expert, and generated from literature review and pilot test. The initial results showed that the first priority main factor is economic, the second priority main factor is technology, and the third priority main factor is environment. At the same time, the results also highlighted that the first priority sub-factor is economic growth, the second priority sub-factor is reduce pollution, and the third priority sub-factor is research and development. The CR (Consistency Ratio) value is less than 0.1 and indicated that the data is considered acceptable. The advance and green technology and system revolution require financial support, and the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) highlighted that people will looking for environmental protection while economic output per capita achieving certain turning point. Thus, the economic growth is significant contributed and influenced Malaysia Port to become green and environmental friendly.

Competitiveness of seaport is determined by a range of advantages that was earned by the seaport to attract their respective customers. Competitiveness is essential for seaport to make tactical plans, to maintain and improve their attractiveness among the clients. The imbalance of hinterland connectivity in Malaysian seaports between road and rail affects the efficiency of Malaysian seaports to be at the optimum level of competitiveness. Besides, the increasing of vessel capacity in the world affects the efficiency of seaport operations to accommodate larger container ships. However, nowadays the trends of seaport competitiveness are changing due to the dynamic nature of maritime business. Hence, analysis on the trend on seaport competitiveness is very crucial to plan and execute the operational strategy to achieve optimum benefits from the trade activities. Nevertheless, most of the researches focused on competitiveness trend in the world but no specific research has been conducted at Malaysian seaports in particular. Therefore, this paper aims to analyse the evolution of seaport competitiveness in Malaysian seaport from 1970 to 2019 and propose a competitiveness cluster for Malaysian seaport to ease the policy revisiting procedure for future development. Systematic Literature Review (SLR) has been employed in this paper to develop a comprehensive competitiveness cluster for Malaysian seaports to understand the current trend of competitiveness among Malaysian seaports in comparison to the global trend as a key preparation for future demand. IT application, seaport services, supply chain, government policy, connectivity, availability, hinterland accessibility, inland terminal cost, transportation network, operation efficiency and seaport cost are the key components of competitiveness in Malaysian seaports from 1970 until 2019. Findings revealed that there are three clusters in Malaysian seaport competitiveness which are shipping services, seaport and terminal, and government policy.

Fatigue is not a trivial issue and needs much attention. On the other hand, fatigue among seafarers could lead to accidents at sea due to their inability and ineffectiveness in carrying out their work. Some were caused by sleepiness and lack of vigour, which, could not only affect their safety but compromising on other seafarers as well. In this study, factors that cause fatigue among seafarers were examined analytically and their quantitative priorities were determined using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. Additionally, the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) is used to identify the best alternatives in minimizing fatigue among seafarers. For this, data is collected through interview involving those working in academic and maritime industry with more than 5 years of experiences in dealing with seafarers. The AHP result shows that fitness is the main cause that could affect fatigue on seafarers’ reliability. Besides, TOPSIS result shows that a well-maintained shipboard is the best way in sustaining seafarers’ energy. In sum, fatigue among seafarers could influence on safety and may lead towards precarious health issue over a long-term.

The multilateral trade relations between Malaysia and MERCOSUR is a new market. This study focuses on automotive policy areas towards the MERCOSUR regime which focus on trade ties. The purpose of this study is to expand national automotive policy to penetrate the automotive sector in the MERCOSUR. While it create opportunities to penetrate the automotive sector in MERCOSUR where Malaysia needs to enhancement national trade performance of FTA potential within MERCOSUR regime especially on investment and trade. The main issue is the lack of progress and process are restrictions on Malaysia's within MERCOSUR in the automotive field. Malaysia does not pursue trade within respective nation but in statistical shows have a large and positive market economy with the southern continent of America, especially the automotive industry and lack of performance of Malaysian counterparts and MERCOSUR and unsuccessful automotive investment and exporters. This research uses qualitative research methods, data collection, interviews, and content analysis methods for this study. Expert from respective agencies as interviewees such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), Malaysia Trade Relations Division (MATRADE), the Department of Robotics and the automotive trade policy of Malaysia and the IoT Institute. Coding techniques are used for coding processes in content analysis. Hereby, the analysis by using the Economic Integration theory with SWOT Analysis to find out the implementation of Malaysia FTA within the MERCOSUR .Hence, research findings show that Malaysia's multilateral within MERCOSUR relations have a potential to be strengthened with a variety of positive and initiatives from the Malaysia government.

The shipping revolution was introduced due to development and improvement that occurred in the shipping industry. Until now, changes in the shipping industry are still ongoing to improve their services, especially by introducing mega ships to transport cargoes. Thence, the shipping revolution stimulates seaport to comply with the requirements for a new mega ship. Therefore, this study was conducted to determine the external environment factors that contribute to the challenge of Malaysia Port towards the shipping revolution. Firstly, the external environmental factors that challenge Malaysia Port towards shipping revolution are identified by using the PESTEL analysis; which are political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal factors. Then, these identified factors are ranked by using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to determine the priority external environment factors that contribute to the challenge of Malaysia Port towards shipping revolution. Data were collected by using pair wise comparison questionnaire which is qualitative method. The questionnaire consists two sections; there are demographic information and PESTEL factors. Thereafter, the data were analysed by AHP analysis. The results shown that the top three priority external environmental main factors that contribute to the challenge of Malaysia Port towards shipping revolution which are economic, technology and environment. Then, the top three sub factors are economic growth, digitalization and reduce emission. As a conclusion, these factors can influence the Malaysia Port towards shipping revolution and need priorities attention. Whereas the economic growth will monetary support shipping and port revolution, digitalization can reduce cost and increase efficiency, and reduce emission towards environmental friendly. Consequently, the findings will raising awareness and as a blueprint to government and port operators during development and expansion of harbour towards shipping revolution.

Transport sector activities are the major sources of pollutants to the atmosphere and natural environment. Seaports contribute significantly to the cause of pollution in the water and water front areas they are located. Like other industrial nations and regions, maritime sector in Malaysia continues to grow and expand to facilitate global and regional trade and as a maritime-related activities result have proliferated in sea and shore. This has exposed seaports to a growing pressure and posed challenges to operate in an environmentally friendly manner. This paper aims to classify environmental issues caused by shipping and seaport activities and propose strategies to reduce environmental issues in seaports at east coast of peninsular Malaysia. Using quantitative research design, data was collected through a survey questionnaire from personnel at east coast Malaysian seaports. The result of this paper indicates that garbage dumping, air pollution, maintenance waste, dust, noise pollution, bilge water, dredging operations and oil spill are the most important issues contributed by seaports activities. This paper suggested several strategies that can be implemented to mitigate environmental issues at east coast of Malaysia including Kuantan, Kemaman and Kerteh seaports.

In late 1950’s, the beginning of container revolution has started a new paradigm shift in maritime industry worldwide. This new paradigm has become a major reason for seaport systems to prepare their physical capacity, space availability, multi-modalism, transport connectivity via regionalisation. However, in early 2010’s the introduction of industrial revolution 4.0 (IR4.0) which starts the era of immersive digitalization proved that seaport systems need to be prepared to face pattern of unstable magnitudes in dynamic maritime trade. Therefore, this paper analyses key components required for Malaysian seaport system to be aligned with the key requirements in IR4.0. By employing document analysis, this research analyses the challenges faced by Malaysian seaport system as well as suggests strategies to muddle through the key requirements of IR4.0. The findings from this research indicate that Malaysian seaport system need to be improved by enforcing skill-based education system, flexibility in labour structure, development in skill and competence level as well as improvement in infrastructure suitability. The findings from this research also reflect significant strategies to improve seaport system in the era of IR4.0 including enhancing requirements for intermodal terminals, improving preparation for seaport alliances, developing mechanism for interoperability, improving utilisation of intra and interregional economic development as well as scrutinising safety and security.

This study aims to analyse the overall sentiments of online reviews on restaurants in Malaysia using predictive text analytics. As we know in opinion mining, sentiment analysis is a prominent technique in predictive text mining. It is a technique that categorises opinions in unstructured text format into binary classification (ie. good or bad). The authors attempt to go beyond the binary classification by viewing texts as empirical entities derived using the Term Frequency - Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) weighting algorithm. These empirical entities, based on online reviews of restaurants in Malaysia, are then manifested into hypothetically defined constructs closely reflecting their thematic and semantic nature. The were 4914 customer reviews from restaurants across 20 towns and cities in Malaysia scraped off TripAdvisor.com using web crawler tools. Then a series of analytical tests were carried out. First the online reviews were parsed, filtered and clustered using SAS Text Miner. Then the online reviews underwent the TF-IDF process to identify significant terms and weightages were assigned according to their importance. The TF-IDF process resulted in a series of important nouns and adjectives from the text corpus. Using these weightages of nouns and adjectives, the authors went on to thematise these terms based on their semantic nature to manifest hypothetical constructs. These constructs were based on the Mehrabian–Russell Stimulus Response Model. Subsequently the authors tested the associations among the constructs using variance-based and covariance-based Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). The authors were encouraged by this exploratory methodological approach in formulating predictive text analytics using SEM. Results indicated that sentiments were generally positive towards restaurants and the important terms derived were price, hospitality, location, waiting time, availability of parking and size of food portion.

This study examined the potential of export items in Malaysia by investigating the awareness and preference for Korean food products. A high potential product list developed from the literature, included reports about the food export status in Korea and Malaysian food trends. An online survey was carried out with 600 consumers in Malaysia. With 435 valid responses, the average awareness of the Korean food products was 3.13, and the preference was 3.48 on a 5-point scale. The awareness and preference of Korean food products were higher in the 20s-30s group than in the older groups. In particular, the Muslim group had a higher awareness for ‘ramyon’ than the other groups, and the Buddhist group had a higher preference for ‘ginseng beverage’ than the other groups. The most well-known and preferred products were ramyon, hot noodles, kimchi, biscuits, fruits & vegetable beverage, and sauce (with Korean traditional sauce)’. Based on these results, the marketing implications of the study findings are discussed.

Malaysia is regarded as one of the leaders in the global halal marketplace, which has undergone huge growth in the past few years. The aims of this study were to identify imported food consumers in Malaysia based on Food Related Lifestyle (FRL) attributes and to investigate the demographic characteristics and purchasing behaviors of each segmented groups. Using an online survey, a total of 600 responses were collected in Malaysia. Excluding invalid responses, cluster analysis segmented imported food consumers into four FRL groups: impulsive, high interest, low interest, and traditional consumers. The results of this study were as follows. First, depending on lifestyle, the groups exhibited significant differences in demographic characteristics (age, race, religion, and education level). Second, differences in purchasing behaviors (purchasing frequency, place, and information sources of imported food products) were verified. Especially, purchasing frequency of imported food was higher in the high interest consumer group compared to the other groups. Based on these results, marketing implications of the study findings are discussed.