Cheap excuse

It's true, as Abdullah observed, this country may be short of thinkers. At least in the right places.

The country's boss lamented on Thursday how 85 per cent of projects meant for Bumiputera contractors ended up in non-Bumis' plate. What a waste, he moaned. So here comes along a smartass, one Sufri Mohd Zin executive chairman of TRC Synergy Bhd to provide answers.

Reports Bernama:
A construction industry player said today the issue of Bumiputera contractors "losing" their contracts to non-Bumiputeras can only be overcome when the Bumiputeras control the vital elements that support the industry.

... The Bumiputera contractors have no alternative but to buy the raw materials and hire the construction equipment from non-Bumiputeras, hence the leakage of the business potential of the government-awarded contracts.
(bold face mine)


Seems like acuity isn't exactly a Malaysian trait.

Sufri, you sound like a typical embittered Umno bigot. Handing off your allocated contract to another party in exchange for a fat tip is wa-aaaay different than keeping your contract and working with sweat dripping from the brows even if it so happens that suppliers of vital goods are of a different kind.

See, if you aren't aware, you're in charge; you're supposed to control the destiny of the project, you can control the efficiency, the scheduling, the material flow, and ultimately the quality of the work you do. Each time and every time.

Riches? They follow naturally if you do good, smart, honest work. Do you?

And as for leakages... leakages is when the many authorities' technical officers ask for bribes, when project managers ask for bribes, when consultants ask for bribes, when clerk-of-works ask for bribes, when politicians ask for bribes... and so are factored into the ballooning contract sum. You know why govt projects often meet with high cost overruns yet those in the private sector prove to be more prudent? Surely you know, but you cannot know - they've been OSAed.

Hence, leakage is not the same as selling off your contract, Sufri. And leakage is certainly not because you're forced to buy critical building materials from a Chinaman.

So what's there to moan, buddy? To ask for govt intervention in the vital elements aspect of the industry is to add another tear in the social fabric which already has more holes than fabric and goes to prove that you're nothing but a crybaby.

TRC Synergy is big enough; go start your own concrete batching plant, initiate your own steel bars import arm, go into fabricating windows and doors. Diversify. Compete. Whatever gives you a hard-on, but leave the govt out of this.

****

A call such as this exposes the expired nature of the Bumi/non-Bumi formula, albeit a very successful political decoy for decades. If anything it allows "connected" parties - both Bumis and non-Bumis - to profit madly while the millions of commoners - both Bumis and non-Bumis - bear the burden. It's neo-feudalism.

Wealth is locked up there in the nethers of cronysphere, fat as nimbus clouds, except it doesn't quite rain down. That is the strata we must break. Look, i'm chink-yellow, but there's no way in hell i'm in approval of the chinks who Ali-Baba their way to their 15th Mercedes. Rather put me shoulder-to-shoulder anyday with Dr Hatta Ramli of PAS, who walks away from the easier life in defiance of unfair toll hikes, who risks freedom with arrest after arrest over human rights issues.

The Bumi/non-Bumi narrative belongs on a shelf of latterday 20th century Malaysia. It's done its part, water under the bridge - reorganized the nation's skills, labour and consequently wealth. But like all strong medication, it comes with side effects and the most serious of these are racial polarisation and lack of competitiveness in the regional and global arena. And a spreading cancer - cronyism - which feeds under the folds of racial fragmentation.

Yes, there is much that needs to be done. But it has to be executed via a different lens. Not a cheap effort called the National Integrity Plan, not a silly slogan "work with me, not for me". But a lens which shows no mercy over "special privileges" of connected fatcats who have been so far protected by obtuse rules such as the OSA, ISA, and a flaccid ACA/Police force, all of which incidentally are under the ministership of Abdullah.

So quit moaning, Sufri. It's not about your race or mine, and which is greedy and which is lazy, and who should dominate what, which is a whole load of crap. That's for the history books. It's about being proud with what we do and how well we do it. It's about sharing for a better good and helping a less fortunate strata of Malaysians find their way forward.

It's about coaxing those fat nimbus clouds to break into warm, nourishing rain. For you, me, and all brethren who toil honestly and passionately on this land.