by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-general and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kim Siang, in Petaling Jaya on Tuesday, 14th June 1994:
Pos Malaysia should be given one week to deliver mail in Klang Valley within 24 hours and to other destinations in Peninsular Malaysia within 48 hours or the government should replace its entire top management and board
Despite all the huge publicity by the Minister for Energy, Telecommunications and Posts, Datuk Seri S.Samy Vellu to shake-up Pos Malaysia, mail delivery service of Pos Malaysia is still most unsatisfactory and worse than before privatisation.
I had applauded Samy Vellu when last month he issued a three-month ultimatum to Pos Malaysia to censure that mail posted in the Klang Valley is delivered on the same day and to other destinations in Peninsular Malaysia within 24 hours or a second postal franchise would be issued by the government.
Unfortunately, Samy Vellu later backed down from this three-month ultimatum.
If Samy Vellu is incapable to going through with his three-month public ultimatum to Pos Malaysia, then he should resign as Minister for Energy, Telecommunications and Posts.
What the Malaysian public are hoping from Pos Malaysia is not super-efficiency where mail posted in the Klang Valley is delivered on the same day and to other destinations in Peninsular Malaysia within 24 hours.
What the Malaysian public have the right to expect from Pos Malaysia, especially after privatisation, is that it should operate with minimum efficiency in ensuring mail posted in the Klang Valley is delivered within 24 hours and to other destinations in Peninsular Malaysia within 48 hours.
Last evening in Petaling Jaya, I received notice from Parliament calling a meeting of Dewan Rakyat from July 4 to 19, informing MPs that they must submit their oral and written questions latest by Thursday, 16th June.
This Parliamentary notice, signed by Setiausaha Dewan Rakyat, Dato’ Abdul Rahman bin Haji Ali, was dated 3rd June.
This means that mail posted in the Klang Valley takes ten days to be delivered – and not on the same day as SamyVellu wants, or within 24 hours which any competent postal service should be able to ensure.
Pos Malaysia has undermined MPs from performing their parliamentary duties with its inordinate postal delays
If it takes ten days for the Parliamentary notice to reach MPs in the Klang Valley, even if the MPs concerned send in their questions immediately, it would be June 23 before Parliament could receive the questions -well past the deadline of June 16!
As a result of the postal delays, MPs are denied proper notice to prepare their questions for the July meeting, as they have only a few days left before the June 16 deadline questions.
This has never happened before in the history of Malaysian Parliament. In my 25 years as Member of Parliament, MPs are given at least two weeks before the deadline for the submission of questions, and not now, only a few days.
By causing such inordinate postal delays, Pos Malaysia has not only undermined MPs from all political parties in the discharge of their Parliamentary duties, it has shown contempt for all MPs and the institution of Parliament itself.
Instead of giving a three-month ultimatum about mail delivery on the same day for Klang Valley and delivery within 24 hours for other destinations in Peninsular Malaysia, and then backing down from such an ultimatum, what Samy Vellu should do is to get Pos Malaysia to immediately implement a system where mail delivery posted in Klang Valley is delivered within 24 hours and for other destinations in Peninsular Malaysia within 48 hours.
Pos Malaysia should be given one week to implement such a system, failing which the Government should either replace the whole top management and board of Pos Malaysia, or issue a second postal franchise to provide competition, efficiency and a sense of public responsibility in the postal service.
Samy Vellu must be the most unpopular Minister in Malaysia and in the world to be getting 750 to 800 phone calls at home every day, half of which are abusive
By doing this, Samy Vellu will be doing more public good than talking about testing a system to resolve his problem of getting 750 to 800 telephone calls a day, half of which are abusive.
Samy Vellu said yesterday that under this new system, which he is testing at his own house before introducing it to the public a subscriber could programme the telephone numbers of their relatives and friends so that only calls from these people could get through. Once a call comes through, a voice would ask the caller to key in his or her own telephone number and if the number is not programmed into the system, the call will not go through.
Samy Vellu must be the most unpopular Minister in Malaysia and even in the world to be getting 750 to 800 calls a day in his house, half of which are abusive.
He should get the message, and instead of getting a system censoring out such calls, he should be withdrawing from political life in view of his own self-confessed unpopularity.