Response to SCMP article on Penang Transport Master Plan

The South China Morning Post (SCMP) has published the article ‘Penang wants to be like Hong Kong and Singapore. Problem: its fishermen don’t’ (31 March 2019) that contains misleading statements that may confuse readers.

I would like to respond to those errors by providing facts about the Penang Transport Master Plan (PTMP) and the state.

Penang South Reclamation: Not land swap

The SCMP article reports that, “The reclamation is part of a proposed land swap deal with the project delivery partner of the PTMP, SRS Consortium…”

Penang state government has clarified many times that the reclamation is not a land swap deal. The most recent was the Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow’s statement published in February 2019.

The reclaimed islands will be owned by the state government and it is in the authority’s plan to develop the land for various purposes such as providing public spaces, affordable housing, commercial and industrial opportunity. And the rationale why the choice of that location instead of the mainland is due to the near proximity to the airport and the Free Industrial Zone.

Multidimensional transport plan

The SCMP article states that “Proponents of the PTMP defend the state’s decision to spend nearly 40 times its annual budget to build more highways in a state where people face long commutes due to traffic congestion.”

This is a misleading statement for two reasons. First, the PTMP is not a highway project but consists of various public transport infrastructures such as the Light Rail Transit, Bus Rapid Transit, monorail, and tram, along with several road construction plans.

Second, the estimated cost of RM46 billion is for a “holistic and integrated transport plan,” as stated by the Chief Minister Chow, “that outlines Penang’s public transport and road networks to cater for travel demands over the next 50 years.”

Assuming Penang’s annual budget is consistently RM1 billion, that means the estimated cost of PTMP when spread out for 50 years would be less than the five decades’ collective figure. 

One wonders why the SCMP article compares the estimated cost of a project with 50-year relevance to one year’s budget to exaggerate the cost?

Fisherman engagement

The SCMP article reports that a spokeperson for the fishermen claims that the state government has not engaged the fishermen community for the PTMP. This is outright wrong.

The project has built not one but two engagement centres at the southern coast, known as Pusat Perkhidmatan Setempat Nelayan. The centre at Permatang Damar Laut began its service in May 2016 while the one at Gertak Sanggul started a year later.

The centres have full-time staffs who are stationed there during working days to provide information and to engage all the stakeholders along the southern coast, including the fishermen communities.

The article also reports that “the reclamation project would decimate fish breeding grounds and hurt the livelihoods of the state’s 6,000 fishermen.”

The total registered fishermen in Penang is less than 3,000, according to the data from Department of Fisheries. The fishermen living in the Barat Daya district, in the reclamation site, number 912.

Regarding the impact on breeding ground, the PTMP requires Fishery Impact Assessment that studies and provides mitigation measures.

Some fishermen are known to make astounding allegations. Just recently, some fishermen claimed that their fishing ground in the northern part of the Penang island is filled with mud drifted from the reclamation work at Gurney coast.

This is despite the strict compliance followed in the project and the coastal current that actually drifts opposite direction from the fishing site. 

Actually, the fishermen had the same muddy situation three years ago before the reclamation started. Yet this time around, they blamed the reclamation.

Penang’s economy

The SCMP article states that Penang’s “economy has slowed in recent years and the state is now largely a tourist attraction, best known for its street food and Unesco World Heritage Site George Town.”

This is contrary to the economic achievement and performance of the Penang state in the recent years. Penang is the state with the second highest investment and the highest Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in 2017.

The gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in Penang was RM47,322 in 2016, the second highest in the country after Kuala Lumpur (RM101,420). From 2014 to 2016, Penang and Selangor are the only two states to achieve real GDP growth among the top five states.

Overall, the SCMP article has not only given a wrong impression of the PTMP but also of the state of Penang.

Cent-GPS study: Racial discrimination or social stereotype?

The recent study by Cent-GPS on racial discrimination in private sector recruitment have provoked many responses.

I bet many are angered by such discrimination and have many brilliant ideas of how to fix it. I just wanna highlight two things about that study by Cent-GPS:

First, the report states on page 12 that it is based on an earlier study done by Lee Hwok Aun and Muhammed Abdul Khalid, which was published in 2016, Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy.

Guess what? While the earlier study was prepared by 2 researchers, the Cent-GPS report only highlighted the Malay researcher in the sub-headline, "The Work by University Malaya's Dr Muhammad Abdul Khalid" (see attached photo). The Chinese researcher's name, Lee Hwok Aun was dismissed.

Not only that, the sub-headline stated that Muhammed Abdul Khalid was from University Malaya. This is wrong. Lee Hwok Aun was the researcher from University Malaya, while Muhammed Abdul Khalid was from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.

UM ranked 87 and UKM at 184, according to QS Global World Ranking. If Cent-GPS wanted to give prestige to the earlier study that their own study was based on by attaching a UM researcher to it, then it should be Lee Hwok Aun who was from UM.

So, the Cent-GPS's study decries racial discrimination but attributed a bi-authored study to only the Malay researcher and deleted the Chinese researcher's name from the sub-headline ???

Second, one of the most significant findings from the earlier study by Lee Hwok Aun and Muhammed Abdul Khalid was that the Malay-controlled private companies also preferred Chinese jobseekers than Malays. They profiled the company to find out the race factor involved.

As cited in Cent-GPS's own study, page 12: "Even companies that were Malay-controlled called Chinese applicants 1.6 times more than they called Malay applicants."

Even though the companies' ethnic profile is important, yet Cent-GPS's own study did not include this aspect. Its reason, stated on page 42, is to ensure randomness in company selection.

Their reason does not make sense for a study on ethnic bias. Company's ethnic profile will shed light on whether is the private sector recruitment really practicing racial discrimination or some other unobserved factors at play?

If even Malay-controlled companies prefer to hire Chinese rather than Malay, as discovered by the earlier study by Lee and Mohammed, then this is not simply a racial prejudice but involved other social stereotypical biases.

Therefore, the Cent-GPS's study is a missed opportunity to further explore the very important question, if Malay-controlled companies also prefer to recruit non-Malays, then what other factors at play and what kind of resolution is needed?

Besides, without including company's profile, and given that the general (mis)perception in Malaysia society that the private sector is controlled by the Chinese, then the Cent-GPS's conclusion may have inculcated further inter-racial suspicion and animosity among the different races. If true, this would be very ironic for the study that aims to highlight and close the racial gap ended up widening it.

We must address the issue of racial discrimination in recruitment not only in private sector but at all sectors. Meanwhile, addressing ethnic prejudice cannot only be confined to the race factor and ignore other social stereotypical biases.

Incomplete diagnosis does not fix the problem but often produces consequences which may make the matter worse.

Cent-GPS should come clean with their study. There are so many flaws in it, as highlighted by Suah Jing Lian and DAP Parliamentary Research Office.

Moreover, the two researchers, Lee Hwok Aun and Muhammed Abdul Khalid, whose earlier study inspired Cent-GPS’s own work have remarked that the latter’s study has went off track.

When the initial resume-drafts used by Cent-GPS were studied closely, one would realised that the resume were deliberately designed for employer to favour one race than another. (See attached photo).

Those who have evaluated resume can surely identify with the effect of first impression from the initial contact. Employers are looking at dozens if not hundreds of resume in a recruitment drive. Anyone who has done so before would know that the layout of the resume, not merely the information contained within it, influences the likelihood of the jobseeker's callback rate.

How the resume is designed does tell how familiar the jobseeker is with the software used to write the resume (computer skill) and the amount of effort used in crafting the resume (diligence).

In fact, the photograph of the jobseeker is as important. Some jobseekers provide nicely shot photograph while others attached a regular picture used for passport. All these affect the callback likelihood, which Cent-GPS seems to have ignored -- if not manipulated -- based on the first drafts they showed to the reporters.

Looking at those first drafts, it is obvious why employers are more likely to call the Chinese because the design of the resume was more appealing and convincing.

When asked for the final drafts that were sent to the companies, Cent-GPS said they cannot reveal those as they would have implication to the higher institutions listed in the drafts.

If that is the case, they can just delete or cover the institutions' name. But this also raises another question, that is the fact that higher institution does have a role in influencing the callback rate.

We all know that higher institution, whether public or private, comes with various degree of prestige and areas of expertise. So, by Cent-GPS’s own admission that the higher institution may be affected has shown that it is not ethnic biases alone that influence the callback rate. By Cent-GPS’s own admission, they have failed to control this variable.

One left to wonder if Cent-GPS’s study was designed to be racially divisive?