What I am trying to convey here is that ethics should not be strongly emphasised only when they are in universities . They should be gradually and continuously nurtured and nourished with ethics from young .
Teachers , parents or their caretakers should work together to help our young ones internalise ethics into their daily lives . Simple practices such as refraining from using pirated software are a good and easy start . All those extra tuition and lessons on swimming , gymnastics , piano and badminton are important but educating and shaping our kids to be ethical is equally , if not even more , important . This is even more so when our kids aspire to be engineers , making engineering decisions which may impact thousands of lives .
I still remember how much effort I had put into memorising the 36 definitions of moral values to ace the Pendidikan Moral for my SPM ( despite regularly scoring A1s during the trials and feeling super confident after the SPM paper , I still only got an A2 ). If you ask me to define any of these moral values now , I would not be able to . So what does this tell us about the way we are attempting to instil good moral values in our young ones , by asking them to take the Pendidikan Moral examination , regurgitate the definitions of moral values , and making it count towards their overall grade ?
On August 20 , 2022 , the Board of Engineers Malaysia ( BEM ) celebrated its 50 th anniversary at the Royale Chulan Kuala Lumpur . The event was even officiated by the Prime Minister , which clearly spells out its significance . On August 21 , 2022 , I was overawed by the beautiful compilation showcasing the engineering marvels in our country as captured in the BEM ' s 50 th Anniversary commemorative book entitled ' Crossing the Half Century Line '.
However , I also discovered a few engineering tragedies from reading the book . Although we can ’ t associate the root cause of such tragedies with ethics , at least not with 100 % certainty , it triggered my interest to delve deeper into engineering projects which reportedly have some linkages with unethical engineering decisions .
A quick search returned multiple hits which mention the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission ( MACC ). One may argue that most of these were merely reported and not convicted cases but why were they happening in the first place ? Some of the cases even involved publicly listed companies some of which have since been delisted due to fraudulent and unethical conduct . In fact , the financial statements of a few such companies were so “ healthy ” that they enticed both institutional and retail investors to rush in to own a piece of them only to find their pockets severely burned when the truth came out . From market capitalisation to the tune of billions of ringgit , these companies are now worth just a few million ringgit and potentially less ; a very expensive lesson for the investors on the need to also take into account the quality of the management teams , including scrutinising their ethical or moral compass .
In the construction industry , a quick literature survey enlightened me on some examples of unethical practices . One major example is when individuals or organisations undertake a project without sufficient or right qualifications and experience . This is strongly related to the very first principle of the Code of Professional Conduct namely “ registered professional engineer shall not falsify his qualification ”. I can ’ t imagine the consequence of a professional engineer certifying a project that is well beyond his or her competence . Again I would like to reiterate that the decisions made by an engineer could impact hundreds , if not thousands , of lives as opposed to medical doctors who could only save one life at a time . A quick chat with my friends in the construction industry informed me that during the procurement stage , malpractices in the form of participating in collusive tendering , bid shopping , under bidding , bid rigging , overbilling , project budget information leakage , and owner retendering project for price reduction , are prevalent . Factors which lead to unethical behaviour include greed , the unhealthy culture of the industry , the lack of transparency , loose legislative enforcement , favouritism , fraud ,
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