Minister in the Prime Minister's Department (Law and Institutional Reform) Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said stressed the urgent need for stronger legal frameworks to ensure corporate accountability, particularly in cases involving public safety and transport negligence.
Citing the recent bus crash in Gerik, that claimed the lives of 15 UPSI students, Azalina has called for policy-level discussions on corporate liability, including the potential introduction of corporate manslaughter laws.
00:00You didn't say it's not sweet at you, it's timely for the government to consider a mandate or a
00:08The corporate manslaughter? That's my personal view. But of course it's up to the other ministry.
00:14Will you bring it up?
00:16No, I just raise it up like that and then I leave it, if you mean maybe the MPs will ask.
00:21But I'm a different kind of person. I believe that you must have liability because if you run a business of transport business,
00:29car, taxi, you don't want the driver only to be responsible. The vehicle belongs to the bus. The driver is just an employee.
00:37It's not his, unless it's his bus. So fit for purpose. But the problem now, maybe some they'll say their defense will be, we don't know.
00:46Maybe it's a secondary driver, part time driver. Companies will usually, but then according to the report recently I wrote, they said that the vehicle is fit for purpose.
00:56So they say that maybe there is an offense by a personal offense, I don't know. But I believe that there must be corporate manslaughter.
01:05My personal view, but this is not the government view. So how can you run a business and not be responsible?
01:10Correct? Like what's happening with Air India, right? Correct? So you must be, you cannot have, you take people's money to fly in a plane.
01:20You have a duty of care to make sure the plane is fit for purpose. So if something goes wrong mechanical,
01:25you want to pay your insurance. So you must be responsible for that.
