PENANG - ADMNISTRATIVE DYSFUNCTION?

PENANG - ADMINISTRATIVE DYSFUNCTION?

JUNE 6, 2005, NST

Renowned hotelier and property developer Tan Sri Low Yow Chuan has had enough of the suffocating red tape and numbing bureaucracy in Penang and is close to pulling out of ever doing any projects on the island, reports NST today.

"We spent 50 years investing (in Penang) but the delays and red tape are unbelievable.

"For local investors like us, it takes eight to 10 years to approve an application for planning.

"After four or five years (upon submitting plans), they (the authorities) come back for another four or five times to tell you to wait, and say ‘wait there’s more changes needed’," said the 72-year-old executive chairman of the Low Yat Group.

As far as Tan Sri Low is concerned, "the Pearl of the Orient is no longer shining".

Tan Sri Low cites several plans for projects that took years to be approved. One particular incident makes him raise his voice. He recalled that his group had approval for a 24-storey condominium block near where the historic E&O Hotel is sited. Ten years after approval and after spending millions of ringgit for piling and engineering works to meet the local council requirements, the Penang authorities reverted to him and said he had to scale the building down to eight storeys.

"When I asked why, they gave some excuse about heritage. I told them mine was only a 24-storey condominium but they had approved a columbarium project of the same height across the road," he fumed, thumping the sofa with his fist.

Low said they argued that a condominium was not viable.

"I said I am a businessman. I know what I am doing. You do not have to come and tell me that (don't come and tell me what is viable or not - 'it is like teaching your grandfather to suck eggs'

"If local investors go through this kind of thing, you tell me what overseas investors will think?" Tan Sri Low said.

"Now I ask, 50 years on, what is Penang? As one of the pioneer business developers in Penang, I think it is still the same, nothing to boast about. "

"In those days we thought of nothing but tourism, tourism, tourism and now it is being projected as ‘heritage and food’. Selling laksa and Nyonya food? You think that gimmick is going to draw people to Penang? "

"When our neighbours (Thailand) can provide better facilities, how are you going to compete with that? The Thais are very aggressive. Whatever we can do, they can jump faster than us."

According to Tan Sri Low, "The administration, the machinery has to be overhauled like a car, it has to be upgraded to what the people want, local or overseas. If you only say you have very good laksa and satay, so what? "

"There has to be other things. I just want to say, for goodness’ sake, time is of the essence for businessmen. If they take years to approve something, this is not good for the business people."

In another article reported in The Star today, the Home Minister assured foreign women married to Malaysian men and other foreigners interested in applying for permanent resident (PR) status here that they now can look forward to a much shorter wait in future.

This is because the Home Ministry had now introduced a system to cut down on red tape to reduce processing time for such applications by at least 50%, Deputy Home Minister Datuk Tan Chai Ho was reported to have said.

In an immediate measure to reduce the backlog of more than 10,000 such applications, the number of people granted the power to sign the approval for PR applications has been doubled to four. They are the minister and the Immigration Department's director-general, deputy director-general and director of visa. Previously, only the minister and the Immigration director-general had the power to do so.

“The Government is aware that applicants, particularly foreign wives, sometimes have to wait between five and 10 years to know the status of their applications,” Tan said. He said that under the new system, applicants would not be kept in the dark about their status. “Once the security vetting and background checks have been carried out, we will immediately inform the applicants whether they have succeeded in their applications or otherwise,” he said.

Malaysian government administration is just full of red-tapes, bureaucratic procedures, regulations and snail-pace administration. Ironically, the government had also decided to reduce the working days to a five-days week, presumably to improve family time, at the expense of efficiency and productivity.

Globalization is already here, and yet we are 30 years behind time. Sooner, rather than later, we will all be swallowed up by liberalization and be left further behind - into the fourth world status. Is this what we called "Malaysia Boleh" Ideology.

In the words of Marina Mahathir:

"We pride ourselves on many things, we Malaysians. And well we should, because we just have to travel to some other developing countries to realize how advanced and easy life is in ours. We have just about everything here. We have good roads, most people have been educated (even as the education system needs reviewing), we can easily go see a doctor whenever we need to (though sometimes it can be extremely expensive) and we have a lot of leisure activities to partake in (even though most don’t require us to do much more than sit down). We are very First World in many ways. But it’s one thing to be ahead in appearances, yet another to be developed mentally. We will never be developed until we learn to respect other people regardless of station and until we become more considerate of others. We have to learn to think of others before ourselves, to put ourselves in other people’s shoes and learn to empathise. We might complain about the so-called decadence of the developed world but then they have more facilities for the disabled and those who are needy than we do. Why is that? Perhaps because to be developed, it’s just not enough to be able to build fabulous buildings and roads, you also need to develop the humanity inherent in all of us."