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The computer labs fiasco: Missing the woods for the trees

There is much public hand-wringing over the computer labs fiasco. The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, he is let down. The education minister, Tan Sri Musa Mohamed, is supremely unconcerned about it all. It was not a Herculean task after all, he decides, and therefore not worthy of his attention. But the condition of the computer labs looks as if Hercules himself had crashed through them. The works minister, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, jumps up and down in high dudgeon like a kangaroo balancing his threats against the shoddy work with demands for a full scale inquiry and passing the buck. Those who should be hung out to dry quickly blame some one else. All agree some action must be taken so all of them would be cleared and some poor fellow down the line held to account. No one wants to find out why.

In other words, the stage is set for this scandal to blow over. When it becomes public, the more the public discusses it, then as surely that it will be laid outside the door of the powerful and the mighty. Why did the authorities involved in it since 1999 not check on its progress? Why did they wait until the end, after all payments were made, when it became a public embarrassment? Why was, for instance, a company involved in industrial negotiations given the contract for 500 computer labs? How many of those given the contracts had any record of building projects like these?

What happened here is what happens every day as projects fail by the dozen. No one in authority is blamed, there is much hue and cry over what happened, a small fry, possibly the one who built it, is excoriated and punished. All is well and no one bothers about it. The New Sunday Times today (27 July 2003) reports of the Anti-Corruption Agency moved in on a failed police housing project in Batu Pahang, abandoned five years ago, but whose contractor was paid RM16 million in 22 payments. Instead of 242 houses, only 172 were, and so shoddily built, with the amenities required in a housing estate missing that the authorities would not give it certificates of fitness without which the policemen cannot move in.

What about the RM100 million padi museum in Alor Star, which the Mahathir crony business man given it, Tan Sri Ting Pek Khiing, abandoned after the foundations were laid and demanded RM35 million for it: it is not known if he was paid. It would be a first if he was not. It is in the nature of cronyistic behaviour that one should not complete, if possibe, any project given him. One example will suffice: Tan Sri Vincent Tan, that international business man crony of impeccable repute, has failed every major privatisation he has been given, and he was given more than most, and still clamours for more.

The Public Works Department (JKR) had given the project management for the computer labs to a little known company, QSC Projects Sdn Bhd. The brains behind it is a class mate of one Dato' Mokhzani Mahathir, and who had earlier botched a RM1.2bn computerisation of the hospitals in Malaysia. But he had excellent connexions in the Prime Minister's department and the Treasury, and corners were cut with dexterity because officials who refused him could well be unexpectedly transferred to Rantau Panjang. QSC now says it is the JKR who paid the contractors and therefore is not to blame. But QSC as project managers would have approved the payments. Why did it when as project managers it should have known that work was shoddy and behind schedule? Since they chose the contractors, did they not check into their background before they were awarded the contracts? And ensured work was as contracted?

That are in one way unfair questions: in Bolehland, the project managers are glorified office boys who co-ordinate the work of the architect, civil engineer, electrical engineer and JKR, for which they get between 4 and 6 per cent. It is a neat way for favoured cronies to be given a handout. It is not required of them to be competent. A Treasury official formed a project management company called Ummiross, and promptly given the contract to build 200 schools, which she promptly handed over to contractors for a four per cent fee. Here project management is one more layer of payments to be made. If the project fails, and it is big or important enough to make it to the newspapers, another round of handwringing begins with no intent to address the root cause. The National Front (BN) faces an uphill task to retain power in Kedah at the next general elections and one of the numerous reasons is that the cronies shortchanged their mentors in the internationalisation of Pulau Langkawi. All those buildings and institutions they built can only be sustained at annual cost of hundreds of millions of ringgit.

In any other country, officials and ministers would have resigned. Here failures are a measure of success. After the computer lab fiasco became known, the director general of JKR is given his Tan Sri. In Singapore, when a beam of a newly built school fell down, the contractor was jailed for three months although no one was injured. When a householder found shoddy work on a new house he bought, the company that built it had gone bankrupt; he threatened to sue the managing director, who quickly promised to have someone repair it for which he would pay; if it had become public, he said he would have gone to jail. Here, he would be praised for a job well done, given a title, and more contracts to prove his success by failing.

The Latin maxim - res ipsa loquitor, the facts speaks for itself - should have governed all public projects, and project managers held accountable for every fiasco. But how could it when shoddy work, corruption, political skullduggery is the order of the day? The computer labs fiasco is only the latest of an estimated RM400 billion in failed projects in the 22 years Dr Mahathir has been prime minister. Projects are for BN contractors to earn a commission and sublet it to the company that should do the job, which has no interest either and is sublet down the line for a commission until the small contractor who does it has to cut corners. Some trusses for the beams of computer labs were fashioned out of wooden cartons for milk tins.

The then education minister's wife had the contract to build smart schools; it is now abandoned. The few she built were so smart that they have no roofs. No doubt the rain knows to stay away and not prove the minister's wife wrong by falling on her smart schools! This would continue so long as projects are rushed through in a bureacratic frenzy and given to a crony to complete with no thought of his or her comptence. Thomas Alva Edison succeeded in inventing the light bulb after 6,000 failed experiments. He could not be a citizen of Bolehland. Our success if framed in our failures, our backyard a graveyard of failed projects.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my