Friday, December 11, 2009

malaysiakini and now ANYONE CAN TENDER

After so many failed projects with some fatal cases, the BN government seems hell bent on rewarding incompetent contractors, based on this malaysiakini article Gov't tenders open to inexperienced bumi contractors too.
So we can expect more highway failures, sick hospitals and collapsing bridges in the future if anyone with no experience can vie for government contracts.

The slogan for this ministry can be
"Now Anyone can Tender" or perhaps
"If it Collapses, Build it Stronger Next Time".

This reflects a mindset that just because one belongs to a certain category of Malaysians, one can do anything with impunity.
My take is that we have different categories of contractors from grade A downwards and one qualifies from the lower grades upwards, based on track records and qualified personnel.

This "anyone can tender" syndrome will surely lead to more failures and even disaster. Don't we have enough failed projects costing hundreds of millions now even with experienced contractors?

Maybe we should think about appointing "able but inexperienced" Malaysians to become ministers if this is the quality of thinking we have in the government.

2 comments:

Trashed said...

The irony is, of course, that there are Malaysian companies who have won competitive tenders in parts of Asia and the Middle East, but at home, they are only sub-contractors to "favoured" main contractors.

Hence, lots of unnecessary "value-add" will result.

If these proven contractors could be the main ones, the cost of projects will certainly be lower.

The idea to improve the quality of bumiputera contractors is laudable but the allegation (at one time) that there was one contractor to 640 Malaysians is true, something is not right.

H J Angus said...

trashed
thanks for your comments.
It appears the system created by the government encourages the proliferation of such unqualified and inexperienced contractors.
It also creates distortions in the labour market - many of these young people will not want to work when they can vie for lucrative government contracts if they have the right connections with the government.
Even worse, it is part of the corruption in the system.