The price increase will affect the lower income group who depend on traditional medicine.

KUALA LUMPUR: MCA Federal Territories Publicity Bureau Lau Chin Kwok urged the government to reconsider the decision to impose Goods and Services Tax (GST) on traditional medicine, because many people often resort to them for treatment.

He said if the GST was imposed there is the fear that people will start using low quality smuggled Chinese medicine which is likely to be a health hazard.

If GST is imposed on Chinese medicine, the poor people are the ones who would be affected not the businessman. With GST the price of Chinese medicine will increase by 3% to 5%, said Lau.

He pointed that, traditional Chinese medicine have been recognised by a lot of government bodies as alternative medicine .

Not just Chinese, but other races also use Chinese medicine and so the price hike would affect them too. said Lau.

Lau is thankful that some charitable orginasations will not increase the price of Chinese medicine and absorb the tax .

This will benefit the people as Chinese medicine needs to be taken over a longer term compared to Western medicine to be effective.

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GST will be a bitter pill for traditional medicine