YOURSAY | ‘If govt is really about reforms, it should promote economic agenda.’

12MP review: ‘Beautiful’ plans but we fumble in execution

RimauTongkatAli: The 12th Malaysia Plan (12MP) mid-term review is focused on the same old thing, which is to level the playing field for the bumiputeras.

This has continued for the last 50 years, and it only succeeded in enriching the elites (politicians and their cronies).

This 12MP along with the bumiputera economic congress is no different and will fail just like its predecessors but will succeed in enriching the elites.

What Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim failed to understand is that when one is brought up with ‘tongkat’ and not in a truly meritocratic environment, he/she will not have the foundation needed to become an entrepreneur.

Trying to implement a failed plan over and over, hoping it’ll work one day, is what Anwar is doing here. Anwar might as well just hand the money directly to these people.

Hmmm: Having a separate bumiputera economic congress agenda is not a unifying move. If the government is really about reforms, it should be promoting a Malaysian economic agenda.

Help those who can move the country forward regardless of race or religion.

Entrepreneurship cannot be taught. You may think you know all about business, but to implement them is a whole different kettle of fish.

It involves a lot of hard work and heartache. People often look at successful business people and think that making money is easy.

They forget the many more who are struggling or are neither here nor there.

For many of them, it is not due to a lack of hard work. Sometimes, just a change of government policy can either make or break them.

There are even instances where the government, through government-linked companies (with unlimited taxpayer's money) compete with the business people.

They can offer incentives or make losses and still be standing, whereas business people with their resources can only afford so much loss.

This is where the understanding of policymakers is most important.

MS: One of Malaysia's salient traits is its emphasis on form. This is why Economic Plans, like the palatial government buildings in Putrajaya from where they emerge, always look impressive from the outside.

As with the lack of a building maintenance culture which Abdullah Ahmad Badawi once lamented, these grandiose plans are never accompanied by implementation plans with key milestones and, more importantly, the punitive consequences for not meeting them.

This is why one never hears about civil servants or their political supervisors being hauled up and removed for non-performance or failing to meet set targets.

Heck, they are not touched even after the auditor-general lists the abuse and financial waste every year without fail.

Will the Madani government change any of that? No.

Madani is founded on not spooking the Malays who are in every way responsible for the implementation of pretty plans, only because they fully occupy the bloated civil service and determine its legendary non-performance.

Apanama is back: Past and recent management research has shown that 70 to 80 percent of plans will fail due to poor implementation.

One of the main reasons why the implementation of past Malaysia plans failed is due to poor follow-up.

First, you need to appoint a competent person and secondly, this person needs to follow up the plan closely.

They need to hold a meeting on a weekly or fortnightly basis. Something like how people follow up in project management.

Those who take up a project and see through it up to completion will know how to go about a plan/project.

However, we know how they appoint civil servants based on crooked merit and competency. Of course, the plan will fail due to implementation and finger-pointing and blame games will start.

Assuming we do not face wastage, leakage, and corruption, we still fail in implementing Malaysian plans because we refuse to appoint Malaysians based on merit and competence.

In short, once we fail in appointments based on meritocracy, we are laying a strong foundation for the failure of the Malaysia plans. Look at the failure of past plans as mentioned in the story.

Of course, the government will not admit it because it will be spooking someone out there and it will not fulfil the so-called social contract.

We know the root cause, but they pretend not to know.

Justice: There’s nothing on-road connectivity in rural Sarawak in the 12MP mid-term review announced recently. Since 1963, rural communities in Sarawak have only muddy, often slippery, dusty logging roads and rely on rotting log bridges.

How to bring or sell produce/products from rural areas to the market centres if there are no good roads like Kalimantan, Indonesia, and Malaya?

How would poor rural communities have high or increase their income if they cannot even sell or market their produce/products because there are no good roads to the market centres?

The planners or policymakers in Putrajaya, especially the prime minister and economy minister should visit Sarawak rural areas not by helicopter but through or along the logging roads used by rural communities.

Otherwise, whatever Malaysia plan we have will be just another Mat Jenin story for Sarawak rural communities.

It is a shame that Indonesians in Kalimantan are fast enjoying good-quality access roads to their rural areas.

Rural areas in Sarawak only have muddy, slippery or dusty logging roads, many of which are now abandoned by loggers after depleting the area of all the timber.

KK Voter: Speaking from 28 years of experience coaching small and medium enterprises or small and medium industry business owners, no entrepreneur empowerment strategy, regardless of the candidates' race, will succeed unless the candidates themselves have accountability and ownership, and are determined to succeed at all costs.

This commitment is what the business owners I work with successfully exhibit.

Knowledge and strategies are easy to teach; what is challenging is the willingness to learn, test, fail, re-test, and repeat as businesses continue to grow.

Unfortunately, it appears that this aspect is not included in any of the strategies aimed at uplifting the community.

Salvage Malaysia: In the past, all allocations for the Malaysia plans went through politicians. They are not interested in implementing the project properly.

They are just devising schemes to siphon money out.

We seem to be bad at implementation and the other one is maintenance of public facilities. Go and have a look at the toilets in the MRT/ LRT stations.

I wonder what tourists think of us.

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