Yayasan Ayahanda Semalaysia fully supports Rural and Regional Development Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob's proposal for a fully bumiputera-operated alternative to popular IT mall Low Yat Plaza.

However, the foundation's executive chairperson Syed Husain Al-Shahab ( photo ) said the foundation must be fully involved in the setting up of the new mall to ensure that there are no middlemen.

"We want it to be 100 percent run by bumiputera, And we want it to be better and more exclusive than Low Yat Plaza.

"We don't want there to be middlemen and we don't want someone telling us which shops the traders should take.

"There is probably a hidden agenda there, and we don't want that. We want this to be transparent," he told reporters at a press conference in Kuala Lumpur today.

Ismail had mooted the setting up of a 'Low Yat 2' comprising of Malay retailers at the Mara headquarters.

This was after a riot outside Low Yat Plaza last month following a mobile phone theft but which was later spun on social media as a case of 'Chinese cheating Malays'.

Syed Husain also wanted bumiputera traders to learn other languages so they can communicate directly with the people they want to source their goods from and not get cheated.

"People nowadays don't see the need to learn other languages. No one told me to learn another language when I was young but I can speak Hokkien.

He said this when asked how Malay traders would overcome the language barrier when sourcing goods from China or Taiwan where many technology gadgets and products come from.