KUANTAN: Starting August 1, the Jawi script will be used extensively at all businesses premises and road signs across the state capital.
Kuantan Municipal Council’s public relations officer Norkamawati Kamal said the script will be featured on all business premises, advertisement boards and road signs throughout the city.
“The move to uphold the Jawi script was agreed on March 1 whereby all dual-languages advertisement boards or visuals at the premises must include the script. This is enforced starting August 1 and action can be a taken against those who fail to adhere to the instructions.
“The Jawi character has to be the standard size as the other alphabets on the advertisement board and must be placed above the Bahasa Melayu word.
"Words in other languages should only be located below the Jawi character,” she said, adding the Jawi script has to be characters approved by the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka.
In Nov last year, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, Al-Sultan Abdullah Ri’ayatuddin Al-Mustafa Billah Shah, who was then the Regent of Pahang was reported saying that the writing system should be used widely on road signs, business premises, office signs, government agencies and all state education offices in the state.
Sometime later, MPK’s president Datuk Fadzilla Salleh said the council welcomed the suggestion and will employ the Jawi script for road signs and business premises in line with the Pahang regent’s decree,
Meanwhile, Semambu assemblyman Lee Chean Chung said MPK should consider extending the implementation date.
“We agree to uphold Jawi scripts but due to limited time, will the advertisement companies be able to meet demands from business with 10,000 signage need to be replaced. It might burden small operators as it is quite costly to replace the advertisement boards. " The local council can start implementing it from government agencies and do it incrementally ,” he said during a press conference today.
Meanwhile Teruntum assemblyman Sim Chon Siang said MPK should appoint a consultant to approve the standard Jawi script since some of the business operators were unfamiliar with the characters.
“MPK must work together with DBP to assist the business operators to prepare the correct characters before installing it. Since there are some non-syariah compliant premises, using such script will not be suitable and might be sensitive so MPK must have further discussions regarding it,” he said.