Response by the Board of
Engineers, Malaysia
Datuk Professor Sundra Rajoo (DPSR) stated that his aim in writing the above report
was to present an objective analysis of the implementation of the Certificate of
Completion and Compliance (CCC) since April 2007. He drew comparisons between
the Certificate of Fitness for Occupation (CFO) under the old regime when Local
Authorities (LA) issued CFO after submission of Form E by the Submitting Person
(Architect or Engineer depending on the project type) and the present regime of
CCC where Form F (replacing CFO) is issued by Architect or Engineer now called the
Principal Submitting Person (PSP) and must be supported by 21 Form Gs signed by
the Contractors/ Tradesmen and Submitting Persons for the respective works.
From his analysis, it would appear he may have
been misinformed, fed wrong assumptions,
displayed a lack of knowledge of the CCC
process and even appeared confused with
other processes which are not part of the CCC
process. There is also an inconsistency in his
assertions that Local Authorities (LAs) carry no
liability (with immunity given) but yet he later
contradicted himself by stating a need for LAs to
resume liability. His premise that the CCC was first
mooted by the Government after being prompted
by apprehensions of a loss of votes at the ballot
box is certainly flawed especially when the Prime
Minister Abdullah Badawi’s administration was at
that time enjoying a very strong electoral victory in
his first term of office. He had completely missed
the motivating point that it was Malaysia’s loss
in competitiveness in the global economy due
to the long bureaucratic delays in CFO issuance
for satisfactorily completed projects which drove
the government into taking the bold step in going
for self-regulation/self-certification and CCC
issuance under the control of professionals.
The non-technical requirements imposed by
LAs which often jammed up the whole CFO
delivery process were taken out completely to be
resolved separately. The CCC issuance then only
focused on the health and safety aspects of the
project completion and can be readily certified
by professionals without any problem. This was
particularly critical for industrial projects where
every month the project is delayed is a big loss for
the factories producing goods for the economy. It
also creates uncertainty to investors and this has
caused some potential investors to choose other
regions with more efficient delivery of CFOs to set
up their manufacturing plants. Furthermore, his
comment that the proponents of the CCC were the
few professionals with vested interests was not
substantiated with facts.
He was not aware that it was the Government
which gave the challenge for the professionals
to be self-regulating to help the country to move
forward and the Architects and the Engineers
readily stepped up to this national call of duty.
However, this is not an entirely new concept, as
at that time self-regulation was already being
practiced on a small scale for bungalow projects
from 2002. The Government recognised that
there are always some black sheep among the
professionals and called for the various laws
and regulations to be tightened up to weed them
out eventually. DPSR must recognise that the
Architect Act and Registration of Engineers Act
are Acts enacted to protect public interest and
hence accepting liabilities is considered part and
parcel of being a professional. It was also indeed
considered an honour for the professionals
to serve the nation in this way and those who
practise their work professionally have no fear of
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