Nanyang Siang Pau has reported that the National Service Training Council at its meeting yesterday had recommended that the national service training programme should not be made compulsory for girls.

It has taken three long years for the National Service Training Council to take up my public call to the Cabinet in April 2004 that if the Cabinet was not prepared to suspend the national service training programme, although it was “half-baked, ill-conceived and premature” from poor conception, formulation and execution right from the beginning, the least the Cabinet should do was to make the national service training programme voluntary for girls, allowing parents who wish to do so to immediately withdraw their daughters from the programme and bring them home.

The call followed the spate of fights, sexual harassment (including rape) and breakdown of discipline in the national service programme. I had also pointed out at the time that out of 1,000 national service trainers, only 15 per cent were women when the ratio of male and female trainees were almost equal.

But this call three years ago fell on deaf ears, including women Cabinet Ministers and the National Service Training Council.

Public confidence in the national service training programme has continued to plummet in the past three years because of the unending incidents, mishaps and disasters including avoidable deaths of trainees, to the extent that quite a substantial number of parents would agree with the sentiments of the letter-to-the editor in the Malay Mail yesterday:

“I would gladly be slapped with the RM3,000 fine rather than be compensated the same amount for the untimely death of my son or daughter.”

Some 365,000 18-year-olds would have undergone the three-month national service training programme by September this year since it was launched in 2004, and over RM2 billion of taxpayers’ money spent.

The National Service Training programme should be a model of transparency and integrity with a full public accounting of the more than RM2 billion spent in the past four years to prove that every sen had been honestly used for the welfare of the trainees. Read the rest of this entry »

EPF Forgot Sime Darby’s Lesson in UMBC
Richard Teo

The pension fund, EPF must surely think that money grows on trees when they decided to take-over RHB at a cost of $10 billion.

They have still not recovered from their early foray into Bank Islam and Bank Pertanian where they suffered massive losses.

Bank Islam alone in its audited profit of two years suffered losses of $2.3 billion.Either they are so naiive about business nvestment in the banking sector or they must be sadist looking for more punishment.

If there is any parallel investment failure in the banking sector we need not go too far for examples. Remember Sime Darby’s adventure with UMBC?Yes its brief foray caused them to lose more than $250 million in a short span of time.

Luckily in quick time UMBC was disposed off lock, stock and barrel and that was the first and last time Sime comtemplated venturing into the banking sector deemed ‘a profitable business which could bring long -term benefit’ by its CEO Mr. Azlan Zainol.

If it was profitable why did Sime’s investment in UMBC resulted in such a massive loss?

By his own admission Mr Azlan Zainol said they have no experience in Banking but they were going to engage professionals to run the bank.

Does this imply that UMBC was not run by experts in the banking field? Read the rest of this entry »

Two news reports today do not inspire confidence that the trouble-prone national service (NS) training programme has learnt from all its weaknesses, defects, blunders, mishaps and disasters, including 12 trainee deaths in the past three years, viz:

• The failure to notify the second batch of 35,046 trainees two months before they are to report for training on March 18, as announced in November last year. Instead, notification was only issued three weeks before March 18. (Sin Chew Daily)
• The Star report “NS camp chief gets the boot” on the sacking with immediate effect of Camp commandant Zulkarnain Abdullah after he criticized the management of the three-star Kisana Beach Resort National Service (NS) camp in Kelantan, which had been described as “camp hell” by the first batch of trainees there. The most recent case of national service trainee death, Prema Elenchelian, 18, from Cheras Perdana, Kuala Lumpur on Feb. 27 is from the camp. Zulkarnain alleged that he was sacked for protecting the health, safety and welfare of the 400 trainees and criticizing the shabby conditions of the resort’s management company, Rimbun Kisana Development Sdn. Bhd.

The instant sacking of “whistleblower” camp commandant Zulkarnain does not inspire confidence that the National Service Training Department is prepared to give top priority to the interests and welfare of the national service trainees as compared to the profiteering camp and resort managements.

Zulkarnain, who received his dismissal letter from the NS Department on Thursday evening and was barred from attending the NS closing ceremony marking the end of the first NS programme this year, is clearly being punished for the New Straits Times report of the same day, “Trainees say it’s hell but company begs to differ”. Read the rest of this entry »

This is sequel and “happy ending” to the earlier post on Monday, Haslinda vs EPF on the inordinate delay in approving her application for EPF Withdrawal Scheme for Education to the extent that she faced the risk of losing her student status in a local public university.

I had promised to phone the new EPF Chairman Tan Sri Samsudin Osman the next day on Haslinda’s case, as on Wednesday, I was to be admitted into the Penang Lam Wah Ee Hospital for an eye operation.

But the EPF Chairman could not be contacted in his office at EPF Headquarters on Tuesday as he was away in Putrajaya, though I left word with his secretary as to the purpose of my call.

The next day, Haslinda sent me a sms to inform me that EPF had called and informed her that the cheque was ready for collection in Shah Alam branch.

I have just received this email from Haslinda with advice for others in her shoes: Read the rest of this entry »

THE BLOODSUCKING BANKS
by Tgopal
Kota Damansara

Once upon a time, not too long ago, when the communication system in the world was at it’s infancy, we had so much problems dealing with banks.

Transferring of fund may take days or even weeks. To withdraw RM10, you may have to queue up for one hour or longer. If you had found a discrepancy in your bank statement, it may take months because the bank clerks/officers had to manually search for files which may be located in a store room hundreds of kilometers away.

But thanks to the latest communication technology now, almost all transactions performed at your fingertips in a matter of seconds, or at least we were convinced that way.

Let’s look at two scenarios and I leave it to the judgment of the readers on to what extent our banks are exploiting us, the customers without whom, they will never exist.

Way back in 1993, when I was still working with a local bank, a house cheque banked into a savings account will be cleared immediately but would be under one day float if it’s deposited into a current account. Still, if the current account holder had an ATM card, he could withdraw the fund after 5pm the same day.

Local cheques would be cleared in two days using KLACH system, in which, these cheques would be sent to the account holder’s branch so that the officers there could verify signature and other technical details. Simply put, if I bank in a local cheque at 3pm on Monday, I can withdraw the money on Tuesday after 5pm at any ATMs.

Fast forward to year 2007. If I bank in the same local cheque at 3pm on Monday, I can only withdraw the cash through ATM on Thursday morning, that this TWO full working days later! ( except for Public Bank, where you can withdraw the night before).

With so much of improvement in the information technology, aren’t we supposed get access to our fund earlier. Why is this working the other way around? Read the rest of this entry »

One of the buzzwords in vogue when Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi took over as the fifth Prime Minister of Malaysia was “quality public service delivery”.

At the first Cabinet meeting he chaired as Prime Minister on 5th November 2003, Abdullah directed every Minister to set up a task force to cut red tape, fight corruption and deliver quality public service.

Abdullah is in his fourth year of premiership, but all these buzzwords have come to nought to the extent he has to set up a high-powered committee to review why these reforms had failed in the past three years.

Even the EPF, a quite efficient outfit in the past, seemed to be afflicted by the new malaise of service inefficiency and indifference as highlighted by the plight of UiTM final-year student who, thanks to EPF, is in danger of losing her student status. And this affects not just Haslinda but all similarly-placed students.

I will phone the new EPF Chairman Tan Sri Samsudin Osman tomorrow and hope that the newly-retired Chief Secretary to the Government will have a satisfactory response.

Haslinda’s fax to the EPF Chairman follows: Read the rest of this entry »

This is email from Heng:

Lately, many Telecoms Malaysia customers are forced down their throats to have a new voice mail message service without even the customers requesting for it. I believe this is part of a scheme to meet the so called KPI of the GLC’s. This service is a nuisance to many customers. The calling party shall be charged for futile calls and the receiving party shall be billed for retrieving the messages.

I hope as a YB, please look into this issue or if this is a minor issue to you as you have to handle other major national issues, please get someone to handle this issue for the benefits of Telecoms Malaysia customers.

What say you?

After chairing the meeting of the Cabinet Committee for Sports on February 8, 2007 Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak announced a RM68.7 million “refurbishment” of the Tun Abdul Razak Research Centre (TARRC) in Brickendonbury, London into a high-performance sports training centre to be fully operational in April.

Najib said agreement “in principle” had been reached with Arsenal to train the national under-16 football team, which will be the first to use the London centre.

The Weekend Mail, in its first issue after its suspension, carried a report raising the question whether Najib had lied.

This is the report, “TRAINING STINT FOR NATIONAL UNDER-16 FOOTBALL TEAM – Arsenal says it’s unaware of proposal” by Rizal Hashim:

THE proposed Malaysia-Arsenal joint-venture to equip the country’s young footballers with the necessary weaponry to raise their game has been thrown into doubt after it emerged that no formal discussion had been held between the two parties.

This was confirmed through an e-mail response from the communications department of Arsenal to Mailsport on Friday.

“I am afraid we are not able to provide you with answers to your questions or an official club comment, however, I can confirm that the club does not know about the proposed arrangement and furthermore, we have no involvement in any such project,” the statement said.

Upon further investigation, Mailsport discovered the only discussion on the subject was held at Arsenal’s state-of-the-art training centre in Hertfordshire, between a five-man recce team from Kuala Lumpur and the centre manager, Sean O’Connor, just before the Cabinet Committee on Sports Development’s announcement on the proposed stint on Feb 8. Read the rest of this entry »

Works Minister, Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu has denied the allegation of the Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Musa Hassan that five of the 14 traffic watchtowers are unsafe for use — with one each in Selangor, Penang, Perak, Malacca and Negri Sembilan.

Sin Chew Daily reported with photograph on Thursday that the watchtower built at Tampin-Gemas Road 16km was so fragile and unsafe that it had been abandoned for the safety of the traffic policemen on duty.

It was first reported on 12th February 2007 (with photograph) that 14 manned watchtowers will be built in accident-prone stretches of federal, state and municipal roads for use durings Ops Sikap 12.

Transport Minister, Datuk Seri Chan Kong Choy had announced that the Cabinet had approved close to RM1 million to build the first 14 watchtowers in Peninsular Malaysia on roads where nine out of every 10 fatal accidents occur, and that each tower is expected to cost the Public Works Department about RM70,000.

On the same day, I received the following SMS from someone from the construction industry:

“Today’s NST page 8 prime news says 14 watch towers to cost government RM70k each is grossly over-priced. “

When I SMSed back to ask what would be the proper price range for such watchtowers, back came the reply:

“25 — 30k with transport and installation costing 5k a piece.” Read the rest of this entry »