Foto Mesir: Seorang ibu yg turut mmbantu anaknya untuk persiapan sebelum berjihad pada jalan Allah...walaupun dia tahu bahawa anaknya mungkin tidak akan pulang

Seorang ibu yg turut mmbantu anaknya untuk persiapan sebelum berjihad pada jalan Allah..inilah suasana keluarga yang memahami hakikat sebuah perjuangan...walaupun dia tahu bahawa anaknya mungkin tidak akan pulang menemuinya lagi..tp di tempat kita??anak2 nk belajar agama pn mak bapak x bagi...

Via:

Luqman Daud 

Our rebuttal to Petronas

Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad,

10 June 2013

The government and Petronas’s responses to our call for audit of Petronas’ businesses and tendering processes in Malaysia have been evasive at best and pathetic at worst.

Evasive because they tried to deemphasize the real reason of our call for the audit of by putting blames on constraints in disclosing information about their international ventures. Pathetic because the way they responded gave an impression that it was not well-thought of.

It has failed to give any good excuse why an audit is not needed; it has also failed to convince that Petronas upholds high level of integrity and transparency.

Our new minister in Prime Minister’s Department, Paul Low has obviously not read well the 2013 Resource Governance Index (RGI) which is readily available on Revenue Watch Institute (RWI) website when he attributed Malaysia's ranking drop from 22nd spot in 2010 to 34th this year to Petronas' overseas agreements disclosures.

It is either that he has not understood the context of the report, or that he is trying to evade and deflect the entire issue by blaming governance or the lack of it in foreign countries Petronas has invested.

In either case it is both embarrassing and disappointing, especially because the newly-minted minister has been helming Transparency International Malaysia in the past and is now expected to enhance integrity of a ‘perceived’ corruption-embattled administration.

The RGI is a country-by-country report card; it measures the quality of governance in the oil, gas and mining sector of 58 countries. It does not measure the quality of governance of a national oil company (NOC) of one country in another country. Via the Petroleum Development Act (PDA) 1974, Petronas is  the de-facto owner, custodian, and regulator of upstream oil and gas in Malaysia; hence when one talks about governance and integrity of upstream oil and gas industry in Malaysia, it goes without saying that it is all about the governance and integrity of Petronas.

In the context of RGI ranking, discussion about Petronas is essentially about its role within Malaysia; very little to do with its operations outside the country.

It is also extremely regrettable that even Shamsul Azhar Abas, the President of Petronas, is unable to grasp the level of transparency required for a national oil company (NOC) with authority and monopoly such as Petronas, when all he aspires is to have the same disclosure standards as Exxon-Mobil or Shell. It has to be more than that.
Reasons?

Well, Petronas being the sole custodian of this immense wealth is morally answerable to all its stakeholders, essentially every single citizen of Malaysia. It has various added responsibilities as a public listed company, which Exxon-Mobil and Shell do not have to bear.

It has the obligation to ensure that it operates businesses in the most efficient way, with lowest total cost of ownership (not merely lowest initial capital expenditure of CAPEX) and  highest yield amid  fair and transparent contract distributions as well, as to enable  grooming of local oil and gas service and technology providers to become global champions.

There is no doubt that Petronas has been performing financially well, which entitles itself annually as a Fortune 500 company. Isn’t that expected of a company that holds the sole monopoly of the most lucrative natural resources the country possesses?

Any company that is bestowed with such monopoly should do at least reasonably well, if not always eminently outstanding. But how well is well? Couldn’t it do better if it has better governance, is more transparent and more efficient? How efficient and transparent is Petronas when benchmarked against peers such as Norway’s Statoil, or Brazil’s Petrobras?

The  real performance can only be evaluated   if the discerning sections of the public are allowed  to dissect deeper, and obtain secondary-level information such as the unit production cost (UPC), unit development cost (UDC), total initial cost of each contract, total cost of variation orders, crude and refined  products trading procedures among other things.

Oftentimes, the ups and downs of these indicators can be directly attributed to strength or weaknesses in executing works due to competency and performance of selected contractors and subcontractors.

As an example, Petronas must disclose why does its subsidiary Carigali has to pay for the non-performing time of the Kencana-Mermaid 1 (KM1) drilling rig owned by SapuraKencana when most of the faults were clearly attributed to the inefficiency of the contractor. It has to allow external auditors to examine basis for awarding contract to Kencana-Mermaid, basis of rates agreed in the contracts and the loopholes made available in the contract, whether intentionally or not, in order to facilitate subsequent variation orders.

Similarly, Petronas must also disclose how much variation orders it or its Production Sharing Contractors (PSCs) have paid to SapuraKencana via its subsidiary TLO for the various marine installation contracts which have been almost a near-monopoly for the last few years. It has to tell all Malaysians who are its stakeholder, what is the evaluation criteria used in the various tender evaluation exercises that has allowed SapuraKencana to keep on winning contracts despite of high variation orders and below average performance.

It has to disclose the contract terms and conditions for external auditors to ascertain the weaknesses and loopholes that have caused hundreds of millions in variation orders. Petronas must explain why it has failed its fiduciary duty as the sole custodian and de-facto regulator of upstream oil and gas to nurture other local companies to compete with SapuraKencana in these areas so that the people and the country can get the highest value for the money we have entrusted to Petronas.

We stress that every directly negotiated and sole-sourced contract awarded by Petronas must be audited. Open tenders must not be spared as well. Evaluation criteria and contracts’ terms and conditions must be opened for scrutiny.

Lopsided contracts must either be amended or annulled and retendered. We propose that the audit is conducted by the National Audit Department, supported by independent and qualified technical support team. The final report shall be made available for deliberation and debate in the parliament.

TPPA: Kedaulatan negara tergugat kerana kecuaian rundingan kerajaan?

.,	22 Jul 2013

1. Keengganan kerajaan untuk memperincikan kandungan perundingan Perjanjian Kerjasama Trans-Pasifik (TPPA) tajaan Amerika Syarikat amat dicurigai di kala rakyat menuntut suatu ketelusan.

2. Bagi sebuah kerajaan yang gah mengumumkan ketibaan era pentadbiran inklusif dan berakhirnya zaman “government knows best”, rundingan TPPA ini adalah manifestasi sikap gopoh dan tidak cermat kerajaan yang terus menerus membelakangkan penyertaan rakyat di dalam amalan pentadbiran.

3. Kegopohan kerajaan bersandarkan kepada alasan bahawa TPPA boleh melonjakkan pendapatan negara ke tahap yang lebih tinggi. Berpandukan
kepada kajian dari sebuah think tank ekonomi berpangkalan di Washington, Malaysia diunjur untuk mencatatkan penambahan tahunan sebanyak USD 40 billion dalam hasil eksport, USD 25 billion penambahan tahunan dalam pendapatan kasar, akses kepada ekonomi AS yang bernilai USD 15 trillion serta pasaran perolehan kerajaan yang bernilai USD 500 billion setahun.

4. Namun demikian, mengambilkira falsafah yang digunapakai kerajaan di dalam perlaksanaan ETP, kami percaya faedah pendapatan tinggi ini hanya akan dirasai oleh kumpulan pemodal dan elit-borjois manakala golongan marhaen terbanyak akan terus terpinggir sepertimana yang
berlaku sekarang.

5. Selagi mana faktor-faktor keadilan ekonomi tidak mendapat keutamaan, TPPA akan terus menjarakkan pendapatan sebenar dikalangan kelompok ekonomi masyarakat. Kajian awal beberapa NGO profesional turut mendedahkan perlaksanaan TPPA kelak akan memberi impak secara langsung terhadap kenaikan mendadak kos yang mesti ditanggung oleh pengguna di dalam sektor kesihatan, ICT dan perkhidmatan.

6. Sekiranya butiran TPPA didedahkan, kami percaya lebih banyak impak negatif terhadap isu-isu kepenggunaan diluar dari dua sektor ini akan dapat dikesan. Situasi inilah yang ingin dielakkan oleh kerajaan yang mahu rakyat
hanya menurut tanpa bantahan bagi membolehkan kerajaan menyegerakan pemuktamadan rundingan. Keadaan ini akan mengizinkan segelintir kumpulan pelobi mengejar keuntungan segera di samping membolehkan pemerintah mengukuhkan imej dan legitimasinya pada kaca mata Washington pasca PRU ke-13.

7. TPPA adalah adalah agenda yang boleh mengancam kedaulatan Negara secara “by design”. Pihak konglomerat Multinational Corporations (MNC) bebas melabur dan berniaga di pasaran tempatan dan pihak kerajaan tidak dibenarkan melindungi perusahaan tempatan kerana ini dilihat sebagai ‘kezaliman’ kepada MNC. Bahkan pihak MNC boleh menyaman pihak kerajaan sekiranya tindakan kerajaan dilihat ‘mengancam’ pelaburan yang dibuat oleh syarikat-syarikat mega tersebut.

8. Nah, apa yang akan berlaku kepada perusahan kecil dan sederhana (PKS) tempatan? Apakah selepas ini kerajaan perlu menjadi pak turut MNC kerana bimbang disaman dan sekiranya disaman berapa juta atau bilionkah yang terpaksa dibayar kepada pihak MNC tersebut? Inilah agenda halus yang diungkapkan oleh sesetengah pemikir sebagai agenda mewujudkan
America’s Pacific!

9. Sepatutnya kerajaan mempelbagaikan penyertaan meliputi pakar-pakar segenap bidang dengan perwakilan dari anggota-anggota parlimen dan kumpulan-kumpulan berkepentingan. Malah kepelbagaian ini sepatutnya diterapkan sehingga kepada jawatankuasa perunding antarabangsa dan bukannya dimonopoli oleh birokrat MITI dan kerajaan semata-mata.

10. Sekiranya kerajaan boleh menganjurkan perundingan nasional dengan menjemput kumpulan-kumpulan masyarakat madani untuk turut serta merangka bajet tahunan, kenapakah tiada pendekatan yang sama digunakan untuk TPPA?

11. Apakah yang begitu ingin dirahsiakan kerajaan? Berdasarkan kepada perkembangan ini, Dewan Pemuda PAS Malaysia berpendirian rundingan mestilah ditangguhkan sehinggalah kerajaan memperincikan butiran TPPA ini untuk penilaian awam dan membuka penyertaan di dalam jawatankuasa-jawatankuasa yang ditubuhkan untuk mengemudi rundingan.

12. Draf akhir TPPA ini pula mesti dibahaskan secara terbuka dengan muktamad akhir penerimaan atau penolakannya dihakimkan oleh rakyat sendiri menerusi satu referendum bebas.

13. Bagi pihak DPPM insyaallah, melalui INFO [Institut Pemikiran Fadhil Noor] yang ditubuh bawah Lajnah Penerangan DPPM akan menganjurkan wacana bersiri mengenai TPPA : Kesan dan Ancaman kepada ekonomi negara dan ummah.

Nasrudin bin Hassan
Ketua DPPM