Safety 101: Who Monitors Safety Board in Bolehland?

(It looks like a classic case of too many cooks spoils the soup – is this a case of too many safety experts from various sectors are now involved in the Jaya Supermarket fiasco that killed 7 people. Image source: Mai Tomyam)

Isn’t this a bit interesting?

Ghazali said government buildings were exempted from having to apply for Certificate of Fitness before occupying the premises.

(From theStar)

Well, if this is so, then what would constitute a certificate of fitness before the government buildings can be occupied? Wonder how many government buildings in this country is in the merge of collapse or done shoddily by underpaid or unskilled contractors and left undetected without the Certificate of Fitness. It is indeed a grave safety issue.

Interesting isn’t? What a revelation after the roof of the Sultan Mizan Zainal Abidin Stadium collapsed? One may stupidly ask “is this tip of the iceberg?” but let’s give the benefit of the doubt, shall we?

And talking about safety and rules, the question is – who is monitoring and regulates the safety aspect of many industries in this country? Who we have in Malaysia to look into the improvement and regulations related to safety?

• The Fire & Rescue Department (the best guys to call when there are snakes in the vicinity)?
• Youth wing of political parties (you know lah, sometimes these guys have nothing much to do)?
• The police (they are good in setting up roadblocks, though)?
• The various construction related committees and boards (they need to be seen as “regulating” the industry after all)?
• Relevant ministries (the way some of the ministers look clueless when tragedy happens shows why some are so eager to do the probing)?
• The Cabinet (Pak Lah’s favourite Plan A)?
• The PM (no one came close to Dr M till now)?

Do we have a PERMANENT safety board that continuously monitors and regulates the safety aspect in the relevant industries? Or we always create ad-hoc safety committees whenever a tragedy happens?

Remember the various committees that were set up whenever a bus goes flying off the highway and killing innocent passengers in the process? Plenty of recommendations were made but still, only recently 17 students were hurt when their bus plunged into a drain. What would have happened if the 17 students had died? Another round of investigations and recommendations?

One tragedy struck and probe committees and experts seem to be sprouting out like mushrooms.

They will get busy with the “investigations”, be in the limelight for a couple of weeks, put forward recommendations that the man on the street already know for ages and once done and once the pain of the tragedy fades away, so does the ad-hoc committees and it’s recommendations. A couple of months or years later, the cycle starts all over again.

In relation to the recent collapse of the Jaya Supermarket where 7 people were killed, guess what the Government decide to do?

The Cabinet has set up a committee to investigate the Jaya Supermarket building collapse.

Other members in the committee include representatives from the Department of Occupational Safety and Health, the Construction Industry Development Board, the Board of Engineers Malaysia, the Petaling Jaya City Council, Fire and Rescue Department, legal advisors and police

(From theStar)

Sounds impressive and more recently more “experts” were reported to be roped in:-

The Selangor Department of Safety and Health (DOSH) have engaged a private consultant to assist in the investigation into the cause of last month’s collapse of the old Jaya Supermarket building in Petaling Jaya.

DOSH director Amir Yahya said the consultant from a local university was appointed to beef up the investigation team.

And for the collapse of the stadium roof, this is what was reported:-

The Public Accounts Committee will launch a probe into the roof collapse at Sultan Mizan Zainal Abidin Stadium, says its deputy chairman Dr Tan Seng Giaw.

And forming of committees and investigative experts seems to be affecting “other areas” as well:-

The Government has set up a special task force and two committees to seriously deal with issues arising from the Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) audit report, with one of the committees being headed by anti-corruption body Transparency International Malaysia.

In the past, many committees have been formed by the Government, have taken their time to investigate and proposed recommendations. Have the recommendations been implemented and enforced strictly? That is more important.

It is good that we have assembled the right experts to find what went wrong but after the investigations, if we do not plug the loopholes, amend the relevant laws, amend the lack of enforcement, arrests and prosecute the wrongdoers and ensure that the same does not repeat itself, we might as well disband and kick out all committees currently in place, investigating tragedies and waste of public funds and wait for the same thing to happen again and again and again.

After all past records speak for itself, doesn’t?