Pig doesn't handle hbase://query/ properly

A = load 'hbase://query/SELECT ID,NAME,DATE FROM HIRES WHERE DATE > TO_DATE('1990-12-21 05:55:00.000');
STORE A into 'output';

This will throw an exception in pig:
Caused by: Failed to parse: Pig script failed to parse:
<line 1, column 23> pig script failed to validate:
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: java.net.URISyntaxException: Relative
path in absolute URI...

Reason is that setHdfsServers method is called in pig, see PIG-4939