Minister in the Prime Minister's Department P Waythamoorthy intends to introduce a new action plan to strengthen unity among the country's various ethnic groups.

The comprehensive and inclusive action plan, he said, would take into account the failures of similar plans in the past.

"We have to admit that some of the plans carried out in the past have failed to unite the people.

"So bearing this in mind, we want to make sure the current plan will be inclusive and consider the past failures and rectify them," he was reported as saying in Free Malaysia Today.

According to Waythamoorthy, the minister overseeing national unity and social wellbeing, the plan would most likely be ready by this December or early January next year.

"Once it is in place, we will carry out programmes nationwide which we hope will go a long way towards enhancing unity among the people in the country," he said.

Waythamoorthy, who is on a tour of different houses of worship in Kota Kinabalu as part of government's interfaith harmony programme, said that he hopes to emulate the spirit of unity in Sabah in his policies for the peninsula.

What impressed him most about this spirit was that there were families with members from different religions.

"Yes, they can eat and drink together without any problem. I think this is an example that needs to be emulated by other Malaysians.

"I intend to introduce this Sabah culture to the peninsula, and we will share Sabah’s experience there as this is the kind of unity that we all should have."