Monday, February 21, 2005

Allow self certification by Professionals.

I wish to respond to the several viewpoint
articles that appear in Property times dated february
19th instant.
As a housing developer with 15 years
experience I would like to assure house buyers that
their fears of shoddy workmanship and fictitious
certification by professional engineers and architects
are totally unfounded.To imply that professionals
would compromise their reputation and risking their
rice bowl merely for the sake of expedient
certification is really going a bit too far.In fact ,
to the contrary,most of these professionals are more
conscious of their responsibilty that the local
authorities. In most local authorities, the people who
are given the task of certification are less qualified
than the professional engineers and architects.Not
only do we developers have to grease the palm of the
officers in the local authorities but the whole
process of approval is bogged down in bureacracy.
When approval is required from six or seven
local authorities one can imagine the inordinate delay
in obtaining the certification for the building.It is
through this bureacracy and time consuming delay in
obtaining approval for certification of building that
has contributed to the present state of affairs where
buyers complain of their inability to obtain
certificate of fitness.
For so long we have allowed local
authorities to issue certificate of fitness and sad to
say it has not work out satisfactorily. The
established system of CF issuance is simply not
working and has contributed to the present unnecessary
delay in the issuance of the certificate.It is not
realistic to expedite CF issuance if the procedure
involves going through six or seven departments for
approvals.When one department delay or sits on the
application the whole process remains bogged down.To
allow self-cerification by professional is to
streamline the procedure and at the same time create
an efficient mechanism for the issuance of CF.This
mechanism allows the professionals the freedom to
decide when to issue CF but this freedopm comes with
the added responsibilty of ensuring that certification
is only given when all necessary structures are built
in accordance with specifications and have complied
with building plans. It is time for us to move on and
try a different method.Surely, the new
self-certification method cannot be as bad as the
present one.Let us give the professional engineers and
architects the benfit of doubt and allow them the
opportunity to shoulder the responsibilty of issuing
the certificate of fitness.Let us not be too hasty in
condemning their ability even before giving them a
chance.

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

False P.R. Holders.

Now that the truth is out, we now know how
the chow kit Indonesians obtained their Malaysians
P.R.The Home Ministry estimate is there are about
300,000 P.R holders.The question that need to be asked
is how many among them are genuine P.R holders and how
many were bought from unscrupulous NRD
officials.Surely there would have to be an exercise by
the NRD dept to investigate and screen all those P.R
holders and weed out the fictitious ones.The Malaysian
taxi Association estimate that among 26,000 of its
members, 20% of them are Indonesians. It would be
interesting to find out how many of the 5,200 taxi
drivers of Indonesian P.R holders are genuine and how
many are false.
The next place where P.R holders seem to be
flourishing is in Sabah and Sarawak.The NRD officials
there seem to be very liberal in issuing P.R. Every
Indonesians you see on the street apppears to have a
P.R.Can the authorities make a check to see if there
is any hanky panky there too.

NRD officials Should Be Imprisoned For a Long Time.

The detention of NRD officials who were
involved in the sale of MyKad P.Rs under ISA is
certainly an inadequate punishment.Judging by the
number of Indonesians P.R who commit crimes here it is
quite apparent that the sale of Malaysian P.R have
been ongoing for along time.The calibre of the
Indonesian P.R holders seem to confirm that any one
who could afford to pay $25,000 to $30,000 could buy a
P.R.It seems a paradox that Malaysians married to
higly qualified expartriates cannot get a sniff of P.R
while Indonesians labourers and construction workers
were liberally getting P.Rs.
It is interesting to note that in their pursuit of
buying P.Rs, most Indonesians have resorted to crime
in order to come up with the money to buy P.Rs.This
indirectly have contributed to a rise in crimes
committed by Indonesian national.With this in mind it
would be correct to say that the unscrupulous
officials who sold the Mykad P.Rs to the Indonesians
were partly responsible for the surge in crimes .The
NRD officials should be hauled to court and put away
for along time. What they did in the words of our P.M
was unpardonable. Their imprisonment should be a
lesson to civil servants that they should not treat
their position as an opportunity to make a quick buck
even at the expense of selling our citizenship to
foreigners

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Castrate Sex Offenders.

I would like to refer to the propose
amendments to the Penal Code and Criminal Procedure
Code presently being prepared by the Select
Committee.The proposed amendments to the CPC,
especially changes to section 376 by increasing the
jail terms for male sex offenders over 50 raised by 15
to 30 years is certainly not a good idea.
Increasing long prison term will tax the govt.
as more space will be required to put up the offenders
and this will correspondingly increase govt.
expenditure.Further, more prisons may have to be built
to accomodate the longer period of time to be served
in prison.
A better alternative and a win-win situation
is to introduce castration of sex offenders.. That
way, an offender , after castration can be freed
immediately and return to society without serving
prison term.Such an alternative would mean an offender
would gain his freedom albeit less his manhood and the
govt would not have the burden of looking after him
for 30yrs of his incarceration.
If the govt is worried about the moral issue
of castration then perhaps the choice would be given
to sex offenders.Either they undergo castration and
get immediate freedom or spend 30 yrs in
prison.However, this choice should only be given to
first time offenders. For repeat offenders the law
should be mandatory castration.

Executions of Criminals Should be Made Public.

I disagree with the notion that stiffer
penalties should be imposed to curb rising crime
rates.(Nst. 31st jan. 2005.)Criminals are mostly
uneducated and they do not study the latest law before
committing a crime.So its pointless to increase
stiffer penalties if they are unaware of it.
I think our Penal system should take a closer
look at Saudi Arabia and China.In Saudi Arabia, public
executions are a common thing and usually done after
friday prayers so that it will be shown to a wider
audience.In China, public executions of criminals are
carried out with a single bullet to the head and in a
public domain.That way would-be criminals would be
deterred as they can witness the consequences of their
action.With a population of 1.3 billion people, this
have to be an effective deterrent. Otherwise , China
would be in anachy.
What is the point of carrying out executions
behind close and secluded prisons where potential
criminals cannot witness the executions?It really
serve no purpose as a form of deterent.Criminals will
only be deterred if they are exposed to the executions
of other criminals.
Many people may consider it as barbaric and
uncivilise to have public executions but what about
the action of the criminals who rape, kill and murder
another person?Surely they are just as barbaric.The
only way to curb the rising crime rate is to have
public executions so that criminals are exposed to the
type of punishment they can expect if they commit a
crime.