Topic: PWD - Public Works DebaclesThere are 3 speakers for the evening, including myself. The other 2 speakers are Ir Yong Yew Wei, and another lady from MCA.
Venue: KL & Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall
Date: 31st May 2007
Time: 7.30pm
Last weekend when I was on Astro, YB Wee Ka Siong concurred with our opinion that plenty has to change, including the Minister himself, in order to prevent our future infrastructure projects from collapsing on us. Well, later this evening, we'll investigate further on the underlying causes behind the leaking in Parliament and the new mega-court complex, cellings collapsing and electricity failing, as well as cracks in brand new buildings and highways.
The medium of communication will be in Mandarin. ;) See you there!
9 comments:
Tony,
The Experimental theatre adjoining the DTC in UM is still in "animated suspension". No work is continuimg for the many years. If I am not mistaken THREE VCs rule the university, numerous convocations has passed, yet the state of renovation is still not progressing.
What is really happening there? Will someone one find out the root of the matter?
It is becoming an eyesore. If the University and government cant settle this, what hope do we have?
Last night's forum was well attended except that our Malay brothers were noticeably absent.Again we were speaking to ourselves with only ourselves listening and applauding.
Their absence was understandable because of their phobia that they would be bombarded with "you are wrong, you are wrong" rhetorics. As such they would prefer to listen only what their own kind is saying.
As we all know UMNO has successfully institutionalised the concept of Malay Supremacy by unleasing May 13. Given such reality our approach should be more constructivive in substance than just pure criticism and rhetorics. Show them the way in which everyone will benefit in a just Malaysia with no risk of an Iraqi situation evolving.
Choice of words to convey an idea is as important as the idea itself. Take for instance, the forum's title :Civil Service Excellence...Quality versus Quantity. In my view the title is inapproriate. Quantity would conjure up things like "dumping ground", "unemployable graduates" "unproductivity", "clockwatcher" and the like. Since Tony was against the idea of "sacking" the excess 30% Civil Service fat, I think the forum's title should read: Civil Service Excellence...Quality Redeployment.
Regards
Simon Wee
wonder if the main contractor is johawki sdn bhd?
Further Minute on the Forum:-
At the forum, Lim Kit Siang was so worked up over the high marks given to the Malaysian Judiciary by the Transparency International for being clean and efficient. He harped on the issue and ridiculed the rating of 9 given to the Judiciary, above those in countries like Australia and Canada. How can that be given the past lapses of the Judiciary. He opined that when the questionnaire was posed to the Malaysian interviewees, the best was that they did not understand the questions and the worse was that they were ignorant.
He jested that the fact that the Malaysian Government did not even go to town over such ranking as reported in the local press, spoke volume abut the finding’s reliability given the judiciary’s history.
It is obvious that Mr Lim has an axe to grind with the judiciary and one of them could be the jailing of his son for a expose’.
As we all know the judiciary’s misdeeds happened during the premiership of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad and many were crafted by him. It was all in the past. My opinion is that the Malaysian interviewees did not misunderstand the questions or are ignorant because what they have in mind are things as they are now and would be in the future given Pak Lah’s promises and efforts. Any way what has the judiciary to do with the forum’s title of the night: Civil Service Excellence…Quality v Quantity.
Mr Lim also ridicule Pak Lah for giving the same old answers about Japan every time he returned from there. These weree that toilets in Japan are spankingly clean and that the Japanese people have a sense of responsibility in everything they do. He pointed out Pak Lah had been to Japan as Prime Minister 4 or 5 times already and many more times when he was the Foreign Minister and every time he said the same thing over and over again on his returns.
In my opinion Pak Lah’s same remarks about Japan were for the benefit of Malaysians who invariably are forgetful. I would ridicule that it is also a plus point for Pak Lah for being consistent, a trait past Prime Ministers seemed to lack.
Again what has that to do with the forum’s title about civil servants.
Mr Lim Eng Guan on his part praised the Singapore Civil Service for excellence by giving an example of a Singapore Civil Servant he knew (a generation above him) who kept on studying for examinations while in service. I do not think it is necessary just to pass exam in order to perform one’s work well. This is because repetition and familiarity with one’s works would develop into efficiency. Unless of course there is a new way of doing the same work and in that case a short stint would suffice as an upgrade.
A theory on the art of government in old China says that if the people were busy studying as extolled by Confucius, then they would have little time to plot and overthrow the Emperor. Maybe that is what the whole purpose is.
Last night’s forum on “Leaking Roofs and Falling Ceilings”, as expected, put all the blames on the Government for its policy of favouring Malay Contractors for such mishaps. Their contention was that if the Malay contractors had enough knowledge and skills of the industry then such lapses would not have happen. There are enough guidelines and byelaws to ensure almost perfect buildings. It is just a matter of implementation. But they don’t and had to pass it down the Ali Baba chain.
What used to be just “Ali Baba” is now taken over by “Ali, Ali, Ali Baba, Baba, Baba”. When there is enough government contracts to go by then everything would be fine. But now with fewer and fewer government contracts available the last Baba who would have to do the job, had to cut corners in order to survive, after each level of Alis and Babas had their cuts. Also with insufficient contracts to go round, only those with the right connections would be awarded even without going through a tender process. As a result, Chinese contractors who could relied on their bumi partners for contracts are now left in a lurch and had to look for new bumi partners to survive.
There was nothing spoken in defence of the government despite the presence of two MCA speakers. There was an overwhelming condemnation of the government’s unfair treatment of other races except the Malays in government contracts. There was even calls to vote wisely in the coming general election. But who is fooling who given the “gerrymandering way” of constituency demarcation.
One participant voiced his amazement that why “Leaking Roofs and Falling Ceilings” happened only in Pak Lah’s time, whereas in Tun Mahathir’s premiership, there was no such occurrence. Tony Pua replied that its was Tun Mahathir who planted such “seeds” and now these seeds had taken root.
TP has concluded rightly!
Spoken to some experienced construction people. The main reasons for bad quality work is normally due to the cutting of costs as a result of very low profit margin, in some cases it is due to too many layers of similar capacity players. The government should have a policy not to allow sub-sub-contractors to sub further. And there should be a watchdog for this.
Meaning, after the main contractor sub a portion of the work, say sanitary work, to a sub-contractor, the sub-contractor can sub out to another contractor, say for plastering work but not for sanitary work. So it is very crucial and it is the main contractor's responsibility to make sure the sub-contractor they take in has good work profile and that they do not need to sub out their main work.
The sub-sub-contractor should not be allowed to sub further. Meaning we should not see sub-sub-sub contractor exist in the work site.
An electrical contractor, for example, should not sub out to another electrical contractor. They can for example, sub out the cement work.
In some cases where the contractors are not competent, they have to sub-out their main work to another contractor and in the process profit margin is reduced.
The following is what Rocky's Bru left in my blogsite: simonscwee.blogspot.com in response to Tony Pua's assertion about the "seeds" planted by Tun Dr Mahathir....
"Hello bro,
It irks me everytime someone passes the buck to the previous administration. It seems to be happening all the time. The AAB-powered media have been trying to transfer to blame to his predecessor from Day 1 while taking the credit for everything that works (including claiming that the IDR was his idea and nobody else's!). After the former PM's salvos, Abdullah's men in the Cabinet and in Umno (who were Mahathir's men, originally, including Abdullah himself) started to blame Dr M for all ills. Some said under Pak Lah there was more democracy as they can now speak their minds (and they blamed Mahathir for their inability to speak up previously!).
I wish Tony Pua does not emulate Pak Lah's editors and ministers. Passing the buck is the easiest thing to do, aside from talking cock. Let's be constructive. Why are the roofs leaking and the celings falling ever since Abdullah Ahmad took over as prime minister? The answer: vanishing quality control. We are not paying attention to quality anymore.
If you pass the buck and say the seeds of evil were planted during Dr M's time, someone will tell you that actually the seeds of those seeds were planted during Hussein's time or Razak's time or Tunku's. Or wattahack, blame the British for our leaking roofs and falling ceilings; they should not have left us to govern our country all by ourselves.
Thank you."
The root of all these problems stems from corruption. In the past 2 weeks, we have seen a high-profile China officer convicted of serious corruption being sentenced to death. Another Japanese minister also commited suicide in a corruption scandal. In such country, corruption is treated as a very serious offence and a big shame to the country. Whereas in Bolehland, the most corrupted senior officials are still enjoying a peaceful and happy life and yet extra billions of ringgit are to be taken from our tax payers' money to cover up the disasters they have created. Tony, why don't you create another new blog topic to compare the achievements of the BN government in fighting corruption, as compared to those of other countries?!
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