November 29, 2011 – 8:11 am by sm
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First, my congratulation to Ministry of Energy for the various efforts with regards to energy initiatives. Nobody should argue more as what had been approved and to be implemented next year is for the good of Brunei Darussalam in overcoming many social issues and problems such as saving and unemployment.
Putting proposals and making decisions are tough jobs. You need relevant information, but more important are doing research and reviewing on the current issues and problems. You cannot just bringing in the thinking of experiences from previous working experiences. Each scenario is different from one another. For example, the ways in Government are very different to the company’s ways.
However, if we are to look back on such initiatives, it’s all tied up to the issues of leadership and decision-making. One might say that bringing in outsiders (Shell staffs for senior positions) was the best move. Many think that they really make a different in pursuing Brunei Darussalam vision. On the other side, they probably think that ‘they are better than us’. Should we say ‘Well Done’ ? But, we had already seen that their decision-making was not convincing. For example, the new tariff was altered from 2 tiers to 3 tiers after so much pressures from the public.
Reading on Brunei papers, it’s sad to read that Minister of Energy was unhappy about the recent error in the issuing of October electrical bills which caused some outcries among the customers. Although the issue was urgently tackled, but the Minister of Energy was pointing to the DES management for causing the hiccups by saying ‘I am still not happy the way DES is conducting their business. This is totally unacceptable….’.
The question should be ‘Who runs and who monitors DES?’. In basic leadership management principals, Head of Department should be fully accountable. Of course that will be shared down the lines. But, public should be reminded that top people looking after Energy (Permanent Secretary, Deputy Permanent Secretaries, and HOD of DES) were the selections of Minister of Energy himself. Hence, he is fully accountable. In this respect, the Minister should not publicly say negatively on DES. It is rather the internal matter or as the Malay proverb say ‘Jangan Membuka Pekung Di Dada’.
Going back to new tariff, I salute the initiatives but the product seemed to me not, say, Islamic. Islam encourages going forwards in fairness ways. The new tariff should be looked in the perspective of total harmony and fairness to the community as a whole, and not only focusing to certain group/s of community. Why 30% will have to, say, suffer which is very contradicting to the Ministry’s statement “If you can afford to use it, then it’s morally right to pay a bit more, to pay for what you use”. What the new tariff should first focused is ‘incentives for customers which will automatically generates profits to the state’. For example, having the cut-off point for saving at certain usage, say 1500 kWh instead of at 500kWh and the rest remains unchanged, or having two cut-off points at different saving rates. I think it is not ‘Nasi sudah jadi bubur’ yet to review or else we just have to wait and see what will happen next year. Should the new tariff create negative scenario, it is what I call negative spin-off of leadership competency.
This post was submitted by sm.
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