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Heads Must Roll at TNB

Another year, another blackout, it would seem. For the umpteenth time, why isn’t Tenaga Nasional being more forthright in its explanation and taking the blame for inefficiency and complacency, among others?

by A Kadir Jasin

‘ PELANGGAN bukan bola – PM’ (‘Customers are not footballs – PM’), screamed the Utusan Malaysia newspaper as it headlined Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s two-hour long address to senior civil servants on Jan 20 in Putrajaya.

Stacked atop the story was a report on the failure of the state-controlled power monopoly Tenaga Nasional Bhd (TNB) to explain the reason for the Jan 13 blackout that left the Klang Valley and the southern half of the Peninsula without power supply for several hours.

The New Straits Times on its part declared: ‘Jolt from TNB, no rebates for those affected by blackout’, while a more muted Star newspaper said, ‘TNB says no blackout rebates’.

It is clear from these reports that not only are the ordinary people being given the run-around by inept civil servants and government-linked company (GLC) managers, but the Prime Minister himself is also a victim.

On the day of the power failure, Abdullah told the Press that such a glitch should not have happened and ordered TNB to investigate and explain the incident.

According to Utusan Malaysia , all that newly installed head of company Datuk Che Khalib Mohammad Noh could say a week after the blackout was ia adalah sesuatu yang luar biasa (it was something extraordinary).

If that is the best explanation the TNB chief can come up with, then I don’t think we need a new head for the power company or, for that matter, any of the GLCs. All that is needed is someone who can write a simple Press statement to attribute such incidents to perkara-perkara yang tidak dapat dielakkan.

Why bother appointing so many young and supposedly brilliant managers to head the GLCs when any third-rate scribe, like this one, can write a Press statement blaming failure and inefficiency on unavoidable circumstances?

For a few dollars more …

AT the rate things have been going in recent months, I am afraid that the Prime Minister’s plea to civil servants and, by the same token, to managers of GLCs may end up being a case of masuk telinga kanan keluar telinga kiri . Or to be absolutely crude and rude – how can the Prime Minister expect them to think out-of-the-box when they are not even aware that they are a jack-in-a-box?

While there has been marked improvement in the efficiency of counter services at selected government departments, the overall service delivery system could very well be worsening.

This has not only resulted in delays in the delivery of services to the people, but has also caused a rise in the cost of doing business with the government.

More trips have to be made to government offices and more time has to be spent at the expense of income-generating activities.

More and more people have come to accept the fact that they have to make a choice between spending some coffee money to grease the palms of civil servants or spend more time waiting.

Both ways, there are costs to be borne — giving some coffee money to the civil servants or losing valuable time for which income could be generated.

In many instances, the system has been institutionalised in the form of middlemen – ranging from the lowly tonto who charges a few ringgit for speeding up vehicular inspection to a few thousand for splitting the land title at the district office.

The more complex the deals are and the higher the approving authorities, the more the consultants charge. For converting a piece of agricultural land to industrial or commercial application, which requires the stamp of the state legislative council, a five-digit payment is common.

Even at hospitals, police stations and courts, there are touts, many of whom are government servants, who, for a few hundred ringgit, can promise to falsify even the results of dadah-related urine tests.

Failing to take the bull by the horns

IT all started with neglect. Over the years, government servants have not only been guaranteed life-long employment, but have also been pampered with all kinds of financial rewards and excellent service awards.

In rewarding and awarding the civil servants, the government has not paid sufficient attention to discipline and punishment. In fact, errant civil servants are hardly punished beyond a transfer.

With a good transportation system and widespread motor vehicle ownership, a transfer is not a punishment at all. All that a bad civil servant has to do is to take more medical leave to be with his or her family and friends.

Yet, without fail, the government has been paying out bonuses to civil servants at a time when more and more private sector employers are struggling to make ends meet. While the official figure may suggest steady economic recovery, not everybody is enjoying the growing cake. There are still sectors that are yet to recover and there is always the problem of distribution.

The real shakeout is only beginning. The explosive growth of China and an equally strong expansion of the Indian economy have both plus and minus effects on our economy. Many sectors and players in the Malaysian economy may not be able to fully withstand the economic tsunami being generated by China and India, and the growing pace of globalisation.

This is the time when the Malaysian people, in general, and the private sector, in particular, are in the greatest need of an efficient public service. Yet, as the Jan 13 power failure suggests, we are not getting it. While TNB is playing hide-and-seek with its customers, losses running into hundreds of millions of ringgit have already been incurred.

Indeed, if there is any honour and integrity left and if we are to believe that there is any seriousness in the oft-quoted pledge of accountability and transparency, the CEO and the board of TNB should consider tendering their resignation, period.

There is no point talking about collective responsibility and the new work culture if an organisation as colossal and crucial as TNB continues to treat failures in technical terms.

This is not about a gas leak at a substation or a power trip. These are technical matters. This is about honour and integrity.

How can we talk about a growing silicon valley and promoting the multi-media super corridor when there isn’t integrity in our power supply system?

How can the private sector talk about zero defects when TNB, after several spectacular failures and repeated promises, continues to treat power supply disruption in technical terms?

The trouble with monopolies is …

IT is understandable for TNB to argue purely on technicalities in the days when it was known as the LLN (Lembaga Letrik (sic) Negara) or the Central Electricity Board. Then, it was a government department. It wasn’t as sophisticated as it is today. Its general managers were mostly engineers, and its board of directors was made up of civil servants and community leaders.

The economy wasn’t so sophisticated. We were using radios and television sets that operated on vacuum bulbs. We had no electric trains, and e-banking was a zillion light years away.

It was fine to have several tired middle-aged linesmen changing one light bulb. After all, to an average consumer, LLN stood for langut-langut naik . But we have since progressed to transistors and integrated circuits. We have junked the steam engine in favour of the diesel locomotive, and in recent years, some parts of our rail and transit systems have even been operated by electricity.

Even TNB has evolved. It is no longer a government department. It is a company. Not an ordinary company but one that is listed on the stock exchange. It prides itself on being one of the biggest companies on Bursa Malaysia and on generating huge profits and being able to attract a huge shareholder turnout at its annual general meetings.

Its executive suite is no longer the domain of the technical types. There is today a retinue of white-collar types from the accounting and legal professions. These are guys who are more likely to talk about the bottom line, the P&L, market capitalisation and currency hedging instead of uninterrupted power supply and delivery efficiency.

So, how can the CEO, senior management and board of TNB talk about their huge profits and handsome dividend payouts, their perks and share options when others have to sacrifice theirs because electricity supply is in the habit of going on the blink?

It is incidents like these that give GLCs a bad name and make monopolies untenable.

Whither honour and integrity?

LO and behold, as if there were no end to damnation, electricity to the locality where this scribe lives went dead at 9.55 am, Jan 24 as this column wan being penned. Fortunately, much of what had been written had been duly saved. So there was no real creative disaster.

When my office called the TNB CEO’s office – the secretary-to-secretary kind of network – she was referred to a certain control manager responsible for the Bangsar Regional Control Centre. He promised to check. He called back some time later to confirm that there was indeed a blackout and promised to call back when the power was installed. The blackout lasted until 11.45 am.

The question is: Shouldn’t TNB have known immediately that a blackout had occurred? Why the need to check? Isn’t there a system somewhere at the TNB headquarters that automatically alerts its top brass each time there is a supply breakdown no matter how insignificant?

It would be useful for every single consumer who was affected by the Jan 13 blackout and other blackouts as well to write to the TNB to relate his or her experiences – like burnt-out TV sets and computers, dead fish in the ponds and aquariums and the trauma of getting stuck in elevators.

And since the Prime Minister had, from the early days of his tenure, asked the people to tell him what he ought to know, they could extend to him copies of their letters to TNB.

If everybody were to speak up, then neither TNB nor other GLCs and government departments in general can continue to be lackadaisical in treating the public. But if only a few were to speak up, then they could be penalised. It has happened to this scribe several times. One of the more memorable occasions was when I wrote in the New Straits Times newspaper about the failure of a large housing developer to co-finance the construction of a flyover. Its parent company, which happened to be a blue-chip GLC, was so upset that it withdrew all advertisements, albeit temporarily, from the newspapers in the NST group.

I am not instigating a consumer revolt. I am merely suggesting that we should all speak up and demand our rights. Who knows, things may one day get better.

I can’t speak for others, but I certainly like to dream that some day soon, I can wake up in the morning and, like Salvador Dali, experience an exquisite joy – the joy of being who I am and ask myself in rapture, ‘What wonderful things is this scribe going to accomplish today?’

For now, my desire is modest – the people at TNB should accept responsibility for the Jan 13 power failure and act accordingly for the sake of honour and integrity.

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