Wong also urged the Sabah government to tell the federal government that it would not impose the tourism tax. “They can go ahead if they insist, but not Sabah,” he added.
He said it was not good enough just to defer implementation of the tax to Aug 1 as the damage was already clear from a report in See Hua Daily News, the largest Chinese newspaper on Borneo island, that about 3,000 tourists from China were cancelling their trips to Malaysia due to the additional burden of the tourism tax.
The Likas Assemblyman said many Sabah tourism players, and Warisan itself, had warned the federal government that this would happen.
According to the report, which quoted a tour agent who was a member of the Association of Inbound Tour Agencies, the group of 3,000 tourists would have to fork out an additional total RM100,000 to pay the tourism tax.
The group is said to have decided to visit Thailand instead.
Wong also wants Nazri to come clean and state whether or not news that the tourism tax is being implemented to recover millions in debts accrued by Tourism Malaysia is true.
“Nazri must either confirm or deny this. Sabahans must know the truth behind the implementation of this tourism tax.”
He said Tourism Malaysia had not helped much in promoting Sabah and Sarawak but with the tourism tax, the federal government had boosted the tourism industries of Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines by diverting potential tourists to Sabah and Sarawak to these countries.
Wong said: “I believe this is more than a wake up call for Sabah so we must stand firmly against this unfair tourism tax policy as tourism is the rice bowl of many and one of our biggest GDP contributors.”