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The collapse, through gross negligence, of the national disaster systems and centres

THE PRIME MINISTER, DATO' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, orders an instant updating of Malaysia's disaster warning systems. The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib, as if on cue, promptly announces the purchase of Japanese tsunami early warning systems. But this is putting the cart before the horse.

There is nothing wrong with the systems; those who manned it were not at their posts when the undersea earthquake and the subsequent tsunami struck. The senior officers took off for the Christmas holidays, leaving clerks and peons, who could not act except on instructions, on duty. Every system failed: the metereological department, the armed forces disaster centres, the police control centre at Bukit Aman, the civil disaster networks. If any country decided to attack Malaysia over holidays, the early warning systems having shut down as these departments.

What Malaysia needs is not new, more expensive equipment, but to punish those who left their posts at the centres. The staff at these centres work, and holiday, in shifts around the clock. Instead, they left their posts, and, for all intents and purposes, shut down the centres. When disaster struck, as the tsunami on Boxing Day, these centres were unmanned. An official cover-up is under-way, to protect the delinquent senior officials.

If they are not punished, the most up-to-date machinery and equipment is pointless and a waste of scarce money. Pak Lah should insist these officers are rusticated for no extenuating circumstances exist for their absence. If they had to be absent, other officers should have taken their place. But could Pak Lah take this drastic, but necessary, step? I doubt it.

For the ordinary Malaysian, it is the Malaysian Control Centre, run by the Royal Malaysian Police and based at Bukit Aman in Kuala Lumpur they should contact. But, formed after the 1969 racial riots, and useless after that emergency, it is all but dead. One does not contact it for any information for it is often unmanned. In the past two days, it has sprung to life, issuing statements and warnings of the after-effects of the tsunami, not for what it informs but a public relations exercise to show it is always around. In practice, one does not even know it exists, until it issues statements. It does not appear in any government statements as the body to contact for information. But one should contact it in an emergency only if one has the time to spare: the telephones are often unmanned.

Then there are the specialist early warning centres. The Royal Malaysian Navy runs the Malaysian Enforcement Co-ordination Centre (MECC) from its naval base in Lumut, Perak. The Marine Department has its National Rescue and Co-ordination Centre (NRCC) at Port Kelang. The Royal Malaysian Airforce has its centre at its air force base in Penang. The Malaysian Army has its Defence Operations Room at its headquarters in the ministry of defence (Mindef) complex in Kuala Lumpur. There is another centre dedicated to the East Coast of the peninsula when the floods hit the states there at this time of the year. Co-ordinating them is the National Disaster Committee, whose chairman is Dato' Seri Najib and who is also defence minister. In addition the National Security Bureau (one known as the National Security Council), which has its representatives in all these committees, reports directly to Pak Lah, who is also internal security minister.

There is also a state-of-the-art but otherwise useless coastal surveillance system costing at least RM100 million. Why? When it was tested against the Telekoms systems, it failed because no one bothered to man the latter's round-the-clock all-weather system. Rather than correct it, it was abandoned. The early warning systems failed because once installed, no one cared to make it work.

This lacklustre attitude seeps through the civil service, the unformed services, reinforced with no checks and balances. Pak Lah and Dato' Seri Najib had the systems under their control, but looked the other way. Their gross negligence would compound if they do not now insist upon exemplary punishment for these deserters from duty, every single one of them.

But they can do nothing. They allowed the systems to break down in their years in office. They compound their dereliction by turning it into a public relations and political exercise. It does not therefore surprise, amidst this gross dereliction of duty, that senior Malaysian civil servants, who should have known better, refusing to confirm the worst, for fear of upsetting tourists. Senior officials snap at reporters inquiring into the fiasco, questioning why they rake up the past. Nothing has changed.

Meanwhile, we pat outselves in the back for our lucky geological position, buffetted from the worst of the tsunami by neigbours who bore the brunt of it. Malaysian casualties, especially in India, Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, are barely mentioned. Wisma Putra is clueless when Malaysians telephone for help about the fate of their relatives and friends on holidays in these lands when the tsunami struck. No one is in charge, as in the early warning centres.

While we gloat on our geological luck, have we contemplated our fate if a tsunami, created by an earthquake in or around the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, rushes through the Straits of Malacca and is forced through the "funnel" below Malacca in the straits? This would not happen? But what should not, did this week!

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@streamyx.com