GEORGE TOWN: A NUMBER of entertainment centres here are giving the state a bad name as they have been found doubling up as vice dens.
Police said karaoke outlets and pubs top the list of entertainment centres with shady operations, where foreign women are hired to work as prostitutes while posing as guest relations officers (GROs).
The authorities, especially the police, are also concerned about the rampant peddling of drugs at such joints.
Northeast District police chief ACP Mior Faridalatrash Wahid recently conducted a refresher course on dos and don’ts for entertainment outlet operators.
“The majority of entertainment outlets here are law-abiding but a handful have gone rogue and are giving the business, George Town and the state, a very bad name,” he said at the hour-long session attended by 40 entertainment outlet operators.
Mior mentioned a crackdown on Sunday where 17 women from China and three from Vietnam, suspected of being prostitutes, were detained at an entertainment outlet in Pulau Tikus.
He said the suspects, aged between 23 and 40, were hired as GROs and a number of them did not have valid travel documents.
Checks showed that some of them had social entry passes and started working as GROs about two weeks ago.
Also detained were five people who were hired to keep a lookout for the authorities.
“This is a very serious matter,” he said, adding that the outlet had been raided on a number of occasions for similar offences.
Mior said the police would strongly recommend that the local authorities revoke the operating permits of these outlets.
He said efforts by George Town police to weed out illegal gambling dens had paid off. He said actions taken, which included severing the power supply to these premises, had put them out of business.
The police, together with other authorities, including Tenaga Nasional Bhd, had forced the closure of 20 illegal gambling dens in the district.