10 Years To Build A School

I may not have the experience in construction, but if given the responsibility, I'm pretty sure I won't need 10 years to complete the building of a secondary school. But that is exactly what happened to a school in Rawang whereby it has not been completed after 10 years!

The Minister of Education, Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said that

"I am disgusted with the numerous excuses given by the contractor." He said the contractor had been sacked and a new one would be appointed to revive the project.

"If all goes well, we hope to have the school ready by the end of the year."

It's interesting that in Malaysia, it takes 10 long years for our civil service to get "disgusted" with shoddy work from their contractors. To be fair to the Minister, he was only given the Education portfolio 4 years ago (still a long time, though).

The interesting question then is, how much have been paid to the contractor, and is the guilty party being sued for liquidated damages?

The Minister loudly proclaimed "[t]his sort of thing will not happen under the Ninth Malaysia Plan". We all hope so too. However, when there has been no apparent action taken on the guilty parties, the likelihood of such occurrences will remain high.

To make sure that the 9th Malaysia Plan education projects are completed on a timely basis, it is critical for the Ministry to set performance targets for contractors - such as a fixed term, say 2 years, to complete building a school and a maximum extension of 1 year, after which the contract may be automatically terminated and compensation sought.

Datuk Seri, is there political will to do so?