PRESS RELEASE
DATE: 27th JULY 2012 (FRIDAY)
PRIME MINISTER MUST FORM INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATION PANEL AND REPEAL SEDA ACT
Association of Water and Energy Research Malaysia (AWER) has sent an open letter to Prime Minister to justify the need to ‘close down’ SEDA 2 weeks ago. In recent weeks, tax payers’ money was used to justify baloney done by SEDA via advertisements. The more they explain, the more they expose their irrelevance in existence and incapability of implementing Renewable Energy (RE) in Malaysia.
Formation History
A series of office politic took place in Ministry of Energy, Green Technology and Water (KeTTHA) after the formation of Green Technology Corporation (formerly known as Pusat Tenaga Malaysia - PTM). This corporation was launched by Prime Minister during National Green Technology Policy launch. Due to a tussle created by energy sector in KeTTHA, Green Technology Corporation was ‘stripped naked’ of all their work related to energy including RE. AWER has clearly indicated that SEDA is redundant and unnecessary because Section 14 of the Energy Commission Act 2001 clearly stipulated the jurisdiction to develop RE is under Energy Commission. Formation of SEDA was pushed through with personal agenda. This matter was also raised to the highest level in KeTTHA many times before SEDA bill was approved in the Parliament. Unfortunately, it fell on deaf ears.
A new tussle is taking place now and it is related to implementation of Energy Efficiency which is being carried out by Energy Commission. SEDA wants it as well. We wonder how the minister and cabinet allowed personal agenda from office politics to be converted to take a leading role in government’s agenda. We repeat, SEDA never exist in any planning during the existence of the Feed-in-Tariff (FiT) legislation under PTM until Green Technology Policy was launched by Prime Minister.
eFiT System Hailed as Ultimate Decision Maker
A computer system will always be a computer system. It is controlled to obtain output via given input. The Chairman of SEDA and the officers have been pushing a lot of responsibilities to this system. They claimed they only know the next day after the eFiT system approved the applications. In this case, does SEDA mean that the entire approval process is fully administrated by ‘flawed’ eFiT system and SEDA did not correct it since last year? If cabinet and government still feel that SEDA should exist, we propose the following to be implemented immediately:
(i) Appoint a leading online system as the Chairman of SEDA and members of the board,
(ii) Create few smaller systems to be appointed as CEO, COO, directors and staffs. We will have a good system with very low operating cost. Computer systems ‘work’ 24 hours and we do not even need to spend money on salary and perks.
If the government feels the above suggestions are nonsense, so do the public when SEDA ‘hails’ its online system as the ultimate decision maker. If the government needs some advices on how an online database system works, AWER can allow our staff to give a FREE lecture to the Cabinet.
Copycat that copied foreign FiT systems
Copying foreign FiT system is the first flaw. Developing RE in Malaysia will have technological and economic challenges. European models cannot be simply copied here for implementation. Technology, human capital and currency plays important role in development of RE. In many parts of the world, RE development are being pushed with financial incentives except for Hydro. This defeats the purpose of developing RE to be a sustainable industry. Moreover, SEDA does not guarantee a sustainable RE industry growth in Malaysia because there is no guarantee that the current players will continue to invest in RE when FiT ends.
FiT is money from the people
FiT is FORCEFULLY collected from people via electricity bill. Any charges paid by the business sector are also passed on to the people via price of goods and services. Why should this money be collected and disbursed to selected few? Recently, SEDA themselves admitted that there are more such monopoly exist in their system and SEDA is ‘created’ to be powerless. So, people do not need a useless agency that has legal advisers repeatedly saying ‘cannot do’ this or that.
We urge the Prime Minister to take responsibility and implement the suggestions we have given in our open letter recently: Repeal SEDA Act, ‘close down’ SEDA and implement RE works properly under Energy Commission. In addition to that, form an independent investigation panel to investigate all the issues surrounding SEDA and take stern action against KeTTHA and SEDA officers that has misled the government and the people.
Piarapakaran S.
President
Association of Water and Energy Research Malaysia (AWER)
