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Politicians/Governments should not be allowed to gag the press or established professional bodies - these bodies should be given the freedom to have open discussions so that flaws can be identified and achievements lauded.
The statement "nobody can say it is a design fault" would have been said by our beloved esteemed legendary Datuk Samy Vellu (pardon me if I'm wrong!).

i agree with bnaipal on this one. engineers should be allowed to openly discuss errors.

the only reason I can think of to actually stop the discussion is the fear of blame, but then someone must take responsibility for a failed project, costing millions of people's cash and having it delayed due to repairs that should never have appeared in the first place...

but then, Malaysia is not actually known for its maintenance of facilities. just look at our cars on the road, count how many of them have busted tail lights. if the traffic police were to take action, it would probably make the police force bloody rich.

Hello Mr Vellu, let the professionals speak up if its design fault or otherwise will you?

When it is engineering and there is a technical hitch should not it be the concern of the professional engineers to query, consult, study and to determine the problem, how and why it was caused, whose responsibility it was and what solutions there are to resolve the problem? The Works Minister who is not a member of the Professional Engineers, and even if he is, has not got the right to shut them up. And if he had, and the professional engineers fearing him had indeed not carried out their obligations as members of that profession then it would have been a criminal dereliction of their professional obligations to the larger community. So I hope the engineers, and architects stop hiding behind warnings of idiotic Ministers, OSA and ISA and and in fact publicly discuss technical issues that have nothing to do with politics in the open. If they can't do that then can I advise that they abdicate from that profession.

While the IEM is a voluntary body of engineers deriving most of its income from members' fees, its members have to register with the Board of Engineers under the government if they wish to sign-off technical plans, a source of fees for themselves; in most cases, they also have to sit for local exams conducted by IEM if they're graduates with overseas engineering qualifications.

Another link to the govt is that many of them are actually government department engineers or heads. Thus the association itself is composed of both private and public sector professionals.

During the building boom heydays, they were quite active, especially when delving into changes of uniform building bylaws, but they've been rather quiet in recent years.

Apart from their Jurutera magazine, they also publish a Journal, which contains technical papers, mostly by academicians as well as people in GLCs like TMB and TNB.

One of the remits of organizations like IEM is to protect the integrity of the profession. This would be the saving point to cut across plural personal interests of the memberships arising.

If Badawi is true to the ultimate objective of transparency and good governance, what more to achieving first-world mentality by placing importance on customer service and a clean maintenance culture, then he should see that this peer-pressure integrity mission in organizations like IEM can be used to good effect to help achieve that objective.

It shouldn't be exclusively the engineering profession. The legal, medical, accounting, construction, housing development, insurance, banking, surveying, and so many more industries, can see their members come together under the steam of their own concern for professional conduct and delivery to help the government define and create a new integrity culture for Malaysia.

That shouldn't be difficult, nor should it take too long. The govt can just call them together and moot these ideas along the lines of what it proposes to do with its ombudsman model.

Rather than have some of them speak in the wilderness, make it decisive so that those who're more concerned about doing what's right for the country can get an official channel to be seen and heard, what more contribute solid ideas shorne of their own organizations' limitations, to make positive impacts on not just national, but also professional governance.

At the end of the day, it's not the materials or processes which are the end-faults of any project failure.

Tracing to its root, it's the people who're handling the projects, those who had planned the budgets, alienated the land, and germinated the idea for development.

Whether projects are too-mega, bungled, or leaked, all depend on the who's of this country.

Create a cleaner home for the youngsters of tomorrow. Professional peer pressure can be a convincing spearhead to create compelling change.

The minister should never utter such words. But we all know that the phrase is an exact reflection of the government AND the government is an exact reflection of the people who voted them.

My limited structural engineering knowledge tells me that if the structure has been compromised and crack is visible even with naked eyes then it's a matter of time for disaster to strike even with 'patch up' works.

Let the professionals do their job without fear so that there will not be loss of lives in future. You can live with taking away people’s money but you can never escape the judgment of taking away lives.

3rd generation

u r quite wrong. in msia u can get away with anything if u hv the koneksion.

Let's refresh:

Designers: Maunsell, Sharm & Zakaria Sdn Bhd

Builders: Sukmin Sdn Bhd, Bumihiway (M) Sdn Bhd and Konsortium Kontraktor Melayu (Wilayah)

Monash University certified the structure design was ok.

Australian experts says "only little cracks"

German experts says some design fault. Samy dismissed their report.

Samy says cannot be design failure.

Final report by british consultant reported it's a design fault.

Samy says could be due to whether conditions.

Yeah, like the design engineers never take into account the whether conditions when designing the bridge.

You're quite right groo. Maybe judgment yes but not Judgment.

I won't send my kids to Monash if they really certified the design is okay.

Ir. Wahid (person who wrote this article) is DG of PWD..

he is the only person who dare to challenge ministers without fear and favour...

he just won the battle with Mr. Sami Vellu in Determining....the consultant who do the repair works for MRR2..

ppl in PWD say he is the man with integrity..

just wana share

anything with a good design but poor implementation will be catastrophical.....

but then, Samy would probably blame the cracks on God as well...

"Samy says could be due to whether conditions"...

Can our weather be worse than say, European conditions where the extremes go from heat that can kill, to below zero that can freeze some to death?

3rd Generation, please take note that even the best design can't guarantee the structure can stand 100% on the ground, because RESOURCES and contruction ground can make a huge different.

The good news is, most of the world megastructure problem is spotted ASAP. However, not-to-mega structure are susceptible to more problem because of other "issues" arise.

Agree moo_t that there’s no perfect design speaking as an engineer myself. But we’re not building anything new here but another trunk road with flyovers which we have been doing so for years already. Why this now?

My beef is not only the design (or the implementation of it) but we as the rakyat can be given such rational like the weather as the contributor to the cracks. We don’t need a degree to dispute this. Many buildings and other Malaysian structures, or even our KL Tower and Petronas Twin Towers were built over long project duration under ‘severe and prolonged’ Malaysian weather.

If resources including the material is of question then again let the experts discuss and learn from this. But we still need to understand who the accountable parties to the problem are. We have too many project failures where designers pointing to project managers pointing to material suppliers pointing to bad skill-sets pointing to ladada ….. 9 MP needs accountability and MRR2 is a fine example to start with. I shook my head when Kuching prison issue was highlighted. How many more are there?

What I am also perplex is, why the government or those involved in this MRR2 project must bring in Foreign Engineers to investigate the cracks??? We do have local EXPERTIST you know!

If you look into the database of Malaysian Engineers, there are SO MANY of our local engineers who are recognised in foreign countries i.e. there are many Chartered Engineers registered with the UK and also Australia board / institution (indicating that they are recognised in these countries).

Why waste the money (plane tickets, accommodation, etc.) hiring foreign engineers to give the report on MRR2? Why not just hire our local engineers who are recognised in foreign countries ?