A NEW VISION FOR URBAN GOVERNANCE TRANSFORMING URBAN DEVELOPMENT

The urban governance in Malaysia is currently undergoing a period of change. These changes are necessary in response to the changing national environment. The urban continues to be the engine of growth. The role of the local government will continue to be the pacesetter and facilitator in order to establish a competitive, dynamic and resilient economy. What are the objectives of urban governance reforms in Malaysia? Firstly, we want to create a local government which is efficient, effective, dynamic, and innovative; secondly, we need to have a local government which is highly disciplined with the highest standards of integrity, and thirdly, we require a local government which is action-oriented, people-oriented, and customer focussed. In undertaking some of the administrative changes, we are mindful of the opinion or suggestion that the local government should become more like business.

There are similiarities between business and public administration, namely that officials or managers in both sectors are involved in organizational design, allocation of scarce resources, and the management of people. But the context of public administration significantly alters the work itself, and so there are differences between the two. Three differences are most apparent. The first difference between public administration and business lies in the purposes to be served. In most business, even those with service objectives - the bottomline - profit -is the basic measure for evaluating how good a job the organization is doing. In turn, the performance of individual managers, can, in many cases, be directly measured in terms of their units' contribution to the overall profit of the company What does "quality" mean with respect to the environment?

A second difference between work in public governance and corporate governance is the fact that in business, decisions can be quickly made from an individual or a small group, whereas in a public organization, inputs are required from many diversive groups and organizations. We call this the pluralistic nature of government decision-making. Thirdly, managers in public organizations seem to operate with much greater visibility than their counterparts in industry - we are subject to constant scrutiny by the press and the public. With this background, we have introduced changes in the local government which incorporate some of the principles of management in the business sector. However some of the structural changes, and the value-changes introduced are peculiar to the civil service. The Malaysian local government has embarked on a journey towards developing a quality culture. The ultimate objective is the evolution of a mindset premised on quality values that would permeate the entire public sector. They are to be market-driven and to institutionalise a distinct customer-orientation in the delivery of services. Service recovery based on customer feedback would also become an integral part of managing the performance of public sector agencies. The Malaysia Incorporated concept has been the impetus for greater and intense public-private sector collaboration in national development. The imperative has been to build a meaningful working relation-ship in order to forge ahead in an increasingly competitive global market place. Rules, regulations, procedures have been constantly reviewed to expedite work processes, and importantly, decision-making.

EFFICIENT GOVERNANCE GEARING TOWARDS BEING WORLD CLASS

The effectiveness and efficiency of the public service as well as its facilitating role has helped the country's economic development. This we have accomplished through the introduction of numerous administrative measures which are designed to provide high quality services to the private sector and the society at large. To be world class, and at par with the best, we have to continue the quality revolution in the public service. In fact I would suggest we think of two Qs: Quality and Quickness. One of the important attributes of quality is to be responsive to customer needs and this means Quickness of Response. Members of the public want speedy approvals of their house plans, certificates of fitness for occupation of their newly-built houses, quick service at the immigration counters, at hospital dispensaries etc. The business community want quick approvals for company incorporation, trade licences, manufacturing licences, duty drawbacks, patent rights, approval of industrial premises, crucial market information on their products and services, etc.

If speed is the essence in doing business, then systems and procedures, particularly those that ensure accuracy, reliability, consistency and simplicity will have to be put in place. The public service will be implementing ISO 9000 very soon. Malaysia will be the first country that will adopt ISO 9000 in its entire public service. Gearing ourselves to world class means that we will gear ourselves to implementing ISO 9000. Training of public servants should emphasise the sharpening of core competencies covering the three broad areas of conceptual, technical and interpersonal skills. However, the emphasis will vary depending on whether the officer is in the upper, middle or lower levels of management. The conceptual skills are skills related to `higher order activity' more relevant to the upper level management where the need is to see issues, recognise problems, strategise, and think systems.

On the other hand, the technical skills are the operational skills, the hands-on type of skills which are needed at the lower rung of management. The middle level management needs a balance of both the conceptual and the technical skills as they act as the interface between the top level management and the lower level of management. However, across all levels of management is the requirement for interpersonal skills. No one works alone in any organization; people will have to network and build relationships at all levels of management vertically as well as horizontally. World class also means the ability to command resources and operate beyond borders. In this regard, our public service should have the ability to support our private sector to effectively operate beyond our shores. There are many ways in which this can be done. Firstly, in business, the question of integrity and image are very critical elements.

In this connection, besides facilitating the business sector through enhancing the administrative processes, the public service must see itself as the custodian of Malaysia's good image overseas, and assist in the conduct of business with good ethics, to see that our businessmen conduct dealings with reputable partners overseas; secondly, the public service has to focus on establishing connections and networking; examine investment opportunities and facilitate the entry of Malaysian products and services to new markets. The country should never be allowed to suffer from a deep crisis of faith in the public service; the people must not criticise us as a faceless bureaucracy that is unable to accurately meet personalized services; the people must not be allowed to spend their precious time finding answers to their questions, after being bounced from department to department.

The new information technology appears to be the key enabler of public service transformation. The notion of an electronic civil service seem to spark interest. During the 9th Malaysia Plan period, the thrust of IT development will be to further develop IT infrastructure in order to create a strong foundation for building a knowledge-based industrial economy. We are on the threshold of an electronic civil service, an internetworked civil service, linking with the tax payers, suppliers, business customers etc; some institutions in the society such as schools, laboratories, mass media, hospitals and other nations around the world. To a certain extent, the public service has used the electronic system to deliver better quality services and products to the public more quickly, cost effectively, and conveniently. In other words, gearing towards world class must mean designing delivery of services around the needs of our clients, rather than just the old structures or the convenience of civil servants.

GOOD GOVERNANCE IN PUBLIC SECTOR

We believe that to be successful, we must always consider a systems-wide approach. Our actions, especially in the area of good governance and anti-corruption, should not only be aimed at instilling the right values and attitudes, but should go beyond that, to strengthening processes, institutions, as well as punitive measures. Integral to a public service of integrity is one with good governance. And as many of you may be aware, in the past years, we have vigorously pursued efforts to improve the public service delivery system to make it more efficient, transparent and accountable. The benefits of an improved public service delivery system are wide-ranging, encompassing positive effects on the economy through a reduction in the cost of doing business, through better allocation of resources, and through shorter time needed to complete a transaction. In enhancing the delivery of services, both big businesses and the man-on-the-street can benefit but equally, if not more important, it ensures a better functioning public service delivery system.

Today, customers demand fast, efficient and quality service in a conducive environment, when dealing with the Government. Effective and optimum use of information and communication technology (ICT) will definitely contribute towards improving the quality of the public service delivery system. Before we go any further, it would be useful to establish common ground in our understanding of the operative term, INTEGRITY, for the purpose of our discussion tonight. Integrity, can be defined as “continuous adherence to moral principles, honesty, wholeness, the quality of being unimpaired; soundness”. The Malaysian Integrity Institute or IIM defines integrity as wholesome attributes of an individual or organisation based on values such as honesty, trustworthiness, fairness, competence, transparency and accountability.

When we deliberate the topic of integrity, the general take is to link integrity to corruption. The level of corruption is a reflection of the state of integrity of a public service and the effectiveness of its delivery systems. But integrity is more than just fighting against corruption. Integrity lies in the conduct of both institutions and individuals. It can be reflected in the implementation of control mechanisms and level of compliance with prescribed rules as mandated by an institution. It is also evident in the conduct of public officers in the execution of their duties. Delivering services with a sense of urgency is as much a matter of integrity as it is to ensure the proper execution of a tender process for procurement of goods and services. Likewise the case of staff manning counters – providing services to our customers within the time and quality standards promised in the client’s charter, service with a smile, also reflects integrity. On the other hand not taking action to improve work processes when there is room for us to do so is a reflection of a lack of integrity. Therefore integrity, or the lack thereof, is demonstrated in all dimensions of our actions whether at the organisational or individual level. And, this applies to both civilian and military services.

THE MEANING OF EFFICIENCY IN GOVERNMENT SECTORS

The issue of efficiency in the use of resources is a critical factor for the whole of the public sector. As a considerable portion of national expenditure goes to the development and maintenance of the armed forces, it is only fair that citizens demand and expect the highest level of integrity within the military organisation. It is thus necessary to ensure that the allocated funds are used in a transparent, ethical and efficient manner. In this there can be no compromise. The government must ensure the highest level of integrity when utilising its financial provisions for its development and operations. As indicated earlier, integrity encompasses all processes and procedures. Careful planning and good governance is necessary in the procurement of military hardware and weaponry systems that may require long term funding commitments. The Government has the right to demand value-for-money.

There should be no repeat of the incidences of highly questionable procurement and maintenance contracts. The use of public funds within the context of a democratic platform demands that the necessary oversight and control mechanisms are put in place and are seen to be effective. Government must ensure systematic assessment of its programmes and projects to ensure results and cost-effectiveness. Maintenance and battle readiness of military equipment also require critical attention. We are referring here to the highly sophisticated and expensive equipment including fleet management. Naturally all of these call for a maintenance culture of the highest order encompassing systems, processes and people. When we do not pay sufficient attention to maintenance schedules, do not ensure personnel are trained on the correct use of equipment or are lackadaisical in the safe storage of equipment, it reflects an institutional environment that does not place enough emphasis on integrity.

All, regardless of whether in the government departments, need to consistently build the necessary support infrastructure for a maintenance culture that works with clockwork precision. In the constrained financial times that we are facing now, it is even more imperative that upkeep and maintenance be given priority to mitigate the difficulty in procuring new resources. Another area of importance is in the implementation of development projects. Our performance on the execution of development projects is often used as a yardstick to evaluate and measure the effectiveness and efficiency of the Government’s service delivery system. Issues such as project delays, cost over-runs and substandard quality of work are often cited when assessing the implementation of development projects.

The mechanisms for monitoring and control are in place. Rules and regulations have been prescribed. Personnel have been trained and exposed to good project management practices. Yet often the results show otherwise. In many cases they point to weak implementation and supervision. We need to be serious about monitoring and supervision. If we are not thorough and lack the stamina to follow through on agreed timelines and deadlines, it means that we have failed the integrity test yet again. Inculcating values, attitudes and behaviours based on the principles of integrity and justice is arguably the most important element in the fight against corruption. Values and attitudes are shaped by an individual's upbringing and his or her life experiences. In organisations, whether private or public or the military, leaders must be at the forefront against corrupt practices. They lead honest lives based on principles of justice and integrity, and in so doing lead by example.

THE ROLE OF CORPORATE GOVERNANCE IN THE CURRENT GLOBAL ECONOMIC

The current global economic challenges have put MNC and TNC in the front and centre of attention. They are under the microscope, their past actions are being scrutinized and their behaviour and actions going forward are being closely watched. They are expected to rise to the challenge and steer their organizations and corporations out of troubled waters that the world economy is now in. The business world is witnessing massive upheaval and scandalous revelations. The crisis calls for a re-examination of the corporate culture and the way business has been done. In some of the scandalous revelations in the US, it has proven that business as usual is not an option any more. That model has been broken. A new way needs to be found. It calls for active, innovative, aggressive corporate governance and bold decisions. In view of this, effective corporate governance has never been more important.

Periods of economic stress test the ability and capability of MNC and TNC and demands that they rise to the challenges. Crisis tests an individual’s abilities more than the good times ever do. Undoubtedly, most leaders will be tested by a few minor and major crises during their tenure. How the individual steers through such troubled times will show the mettle he or she is made of. The MNC and TNC of today are being tested on several levels, both internally and externally. While they may have some control over their internal environment, they certainly do not know what awaits them externally in the current volatile business environment. Loyal and hardworking employees are the best asset of any organization, and yes, even in the high tech era and in the computerized age. It is important to retain talent and more so during difficult times. Strengthen and retain what you have.

Pull your talent together and take decisive decisions. Do not let good talent get away. It will be more difficult to find them when the recovery comes, which will come, just as the sun will rise again tomorrow. Today, the MNC and TNC is expected to be pro-active in contingency planning, to anticipate and prepare responses. Expediency in the appropriate response can negate losses. As the Chinese word for crisis, Wei ji, is composed of two characters signifying “Opportunity” and “Danger”, the current crisis with its many downsides also offers opportunities. It is necessary for business leaders and MNC and TNC to seek out the possibilities in these challenging times. You must do this to remain relevant, sustainable and competitive. Corporate governance is a demanding role even during times of relative calm. It calls for balancing of internal and inter-business relationships and more so during a crisis, when courage and desire to lead well and effectively are put to the test.

Businesses are downsizing, retrenching and reducing the number of work days. Many of the institutions that were household names around the world have disappeared and the workings of their internal corporate culture has been shaken to the core. The faith and confidence of their employees, shareholders and customers has been shattered and it will be an uphill task to regain their trust and rebuild the company’s reputation. In the fast paced world of business, MNC and TNC must not only multi-task and cater to the varied and different demands on their time from the multitude of constituents; but they must be ahead of the business cycle in ensuring the continued survival of their businesses. While the bottom line and the financial performance of a company is important, there is more to running a corporation than just bottom lines. The continued survival of the company and that of the MNC and TNC will depend on the corporate governance and skills demonstrated in enhancing competitiveness and efficiency of the corporation; retaining and building confidence of their employees, maintaining trust of shareholders and retaining loyalty of customers.

In the current difficult environment MNC and TNC are required to deliver far more than they have done so in the past. A lot rests on your shoulders as business leaders – shareholders, employees, customers and the community at large demand total commitment from business leaders to deliver on your promise to provide the best service and quality products with honesty and integrity. They will accept nothing less.

NEW GOVERNANCE IN THE PUBLIC SERVICE

The concept of leadership is neither new nor unique to the public service. It has been discussed frequently be it at the public or business forums as well as literature. It seems however, that interest in public service leadership has had resurgence in recent years. An OECD Survey shows that many OECD governments, including Germany, Norway, the UK and the US, have given high priority to this issue during the last couple of years. The Survey also highlighted that there seems to be a missing link or gap between the underlying values of public service and the interests of the citizens served. It is acknowledged that the influence of public service leadership in terms of policy advices, policy implementation and decision making have profound and extensive impact on the life of the people. Nevertheless, the influence has a further line of sight in repercussions if not delivered efficiently. For instance, a flawed decision may have tremendous consequences to the society at large.

Leadership is indeed a critical component of good public governance. By governance, which the underlying values of a nation are articulated and institutionalised. It is these values that will guide the actions of public officials throughout the system and they must be embedded in culture. The question is how we actualize these values in the public service. The primary function of public service is to translate the national vision into tangible outcomes. The Malaysian Public Service has been successful in their efforts to drive national development and nation building as well as enhancing and upgrading capacity and capabilities. Within a short period of five decades, we have managed not only to build our nation, but set our foothold in the global arena. These developments congruent towards a maturing society and a maturing nation. The challenges of the 21st century however, is to steer the nation into a new dimension both locally and globally.

It is alarming to note that despite the numerous measures undertaken to improve the public service delivery, a recent survey by the Malaysian Integrity Institute, indicates that the public’s impression of public service delivery is even lower than its perception on corruption. In this context, there is a need for the profiling of the public service image. The public service must look at its role with a new pair of eyes and through a fresh lens to ensure it rises to the challenges put before Malaysia with unsullied solutions. Profiling the public service image can be translated through the inculcation of values which must be embedded among the public officials and transcends throughout the system. By culture for excellence, setting high standards of performance with tangible goals and realistic plans to achieve them. This would require a change from an input-oriented practice to outcome-based approaches.

The outcome-based approach provides transparency, as such, the progress of projects and programmes are more easily monitored towards the prescribed goals. The public also has the opportunity to see its value for money. The implementation of this approach is anticipated to improve performance and public accountability. Demanding a high standard of performance by itself however, is inadequate if there is no follow-through and follow-up action. We are often praised for having the best plans, unfortunately often lacking in the drive and commitment in its implementation and completion. The public service should no longer be satisfied with merely mediocre performance and therefore, leadership in the public service must demand a high standard of performance. We must always challenge and stretch ourselves and never be afraid of coming out with new ideas and approaches. Attaining seamless service delivery is still one of the major problems confronting the public service today. World class public service delivery can only be achieved through a high level of inter-agency collaboration.

SET UP URBAN GOVERNANCE INSTITUTE

PETALING JAYA: A government-funded Institute of Urban Governance has to be set up to better serve cities and towns. Social activist Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye, who made the call, said the development and management of urban centres was among the major challenges faced by the Government due to rapid urbanisation. He said the concentration of development and human activities in cities and towns had exposed the population there to an environment that was “physically, psychologically and socially taxing”, leading to a host of complex urban problems.“It is time for the Government to set up an institute for urban governance, which can function as a national resources and training centre for urban governance and development,” Lee said in a statement.

Lee said such an institute could help facilitate research by providing support to academicians and individuals to undertake research, and also provide consultancy on urban issues.He suggested that academic experts, research organisations and government agencies conduct academic programmes in urban planning for local government officials and others to better manage towns and cities. “Urbanisation should lead to community spirit-building. Where urban centres are built, pro-active efforts must be taken to build a sense of community and belonging among the multi-ethnic residents,” he added.

edited from The Star 17 February 2007

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 8 (Bernama) -- The government should set up an Institute of Township Management to serve as a centre of excellence for local government administration, suggests social activist Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye.Lee said such an institute could also carry out research work and offer advice on issues involving township management, besides organising courses and training for local government officers."While Malaysia is undergoing rapid township or municipality development, the provision of various services to residents should be part of the national agenda," he said in a statement issued here Sunday.

As such, he said, many technical staff in areas such as planning, architecture, engineering and other professional fields would have to be recruited to increase the capacity of the local governments in administering their respective areas."The local governments must also be sensitive to public grouses and opinions in order to function effectively."In this respect, the public must be encouraged to voice out their views and to participate by being part of the consultative committees set up."Lee said 60 per cent of Malaysia's population now lived in the towns and cities, indicating rapid urban development due to rural-urgan migration.

edited from Bernama 8 February 2009

THE OPPORTUNITIES AND IMPLICATIONS PRIVATISATION IN MALAYSIA

Upon gaining independence, the Government, inevitably had to take the leading role in developing the country, in view of the limited capacity of the local private sector at that time in terms of entrepreneurial, managerial and financial resources. The kind of egalitarian principles which influenced many developed countries to nationalise or even to become communist also affected Malaysia with its many imbalances and disparities. From the provision of utilities such as roads, water, electricity, telephone, postal services, etc., the Malaysian Government moved swiftly into purely economic activities. Within a very short period hundreds of Government owned companies were formed to do, among other things, housing development, trade, run hotels, estates, mines, shipping, airlines, construction and manufacturing. By the 1980`s some 10 billion ringgit was directly invested in about 1,000 companies.

Guarantees total 25 billion ringgit. While some succeeded admirably, most failed. Even those which are monopolistic are not able to pay their way, much less make a profit. The pendulum had obviously swung too far. While we cannot say the policy is a total failure, for much experience had been gained from it, we cannot continue to pay this very high price.Given this scenario, the Government at the beginning of this decade, decided upon privatisation as a way out. At that time privatisation was not the world trend that it is now. But the many failures and the high cost of Government involvement left us with no choice but to try this unproven approach. Besides, the country now has the infrastructure in place and the private sector is better equipped with man, money and skills to make privatisation feasible. In Japan, while the private railways make profits, the Japan National Railways (JNR) when it was owned by the Government, lost money constantly.

Now the JNR has been privatised and in its first year of operation the companies have made profits. Apart from the new owners and probably some key executives the people manning the JNR are the same. Yet the performance is different. The assumption must be that the management input is different. Management is not one of Malaysia`s strong points. In the first instant we do not have enough managers. Of the ones that we have, a good number are unfortunately mediocre. Some we have seen are downright dishonest. If privatisation is going to remedy the ills of nationalisation then we must have good managers. The Government cannot afford to have too many failures in the privatised companies. We do not want to be forced to take them back. We do not want to involve ourselves in business again. While the Government will exercise every care to ensure that Government enterprises will not fall into the wrong hands, we hope that responsible institutions in the private sector such as merchant banks, business consultants and intending entrepreneurs will study very carefully the ability of the companies taking over Government services or enterprises.

There are many good examples in other countries. We must learn from them. If necessary, we should use their expertise, their direct involvement even. Let us admit that we do not know everything. There is so much we can learn from others with their experience. If the Government happens to award the enterprise to companies that are partly owned by foreigners, it is not because the Government is not patriotic or un-Malaysian. We want to save the nation from disasterous mistakes. But that does not mean that capable locals cannot on their own succeed in taking over the services we wish to privatise. The fear of price increases is greatly felt with privatisation of monopolies where prices may be determined by the need to earn super normal profits. It is the function of the Government therefore to prevent such a move by the private sector through the establishment and enforcement of an effective regulatory mechanism.

Such a mechanism will not only have to regulate prices of services but also its quality and geographical coverage. In the licence to Syarikat Telekom Malaysia for example, the company is bound to continue with the unprofitable services to the rural areas. But we would like to assure interested parties that the Government does not wish to regulate unless the situation compels it to do so.Fears of strategic industries falling into the hands of foreigners can be easily circumvented through specific provisions in the instruments enabling the industry to be privatised. Fears of the privatised entity undertaking actions which are injurious to national interests can also be overcome through this means. Hence, although it is admitted that there are dangers attached to the policy, safeguards can be built-in to circumvent such dangers. As we can see, privatisation does not mean that the Government will be absolved of its social responsibilities.

The Government will still maintain its role as the guardian of public welfare. This will be done through minimal regulatory measures rather than through direct participation in the production of goods and services. Where subsidies are unavoidable these will continue to be provided but on a more selective basis and to deserving cases. The Government will remain accountable to the public and must therefore be responsible for ensuring that privatisation will be beneficial to all concerned. The Government truly believes that privatisation will on the whole be beneficial to the nation and hence it is fully committed to it.

STRATEGY FOR GROWTH: TOWARDS A MORE COMPETITIVE ECONOMY

Over the past year, many conferences, seminars, dialogues and panel discussions have been organised to extract ideas and views from across a wide cross-section of the population on what is needed to put the Malaysian economy back on track. In an increasingly unstable international trading environment, fresh ideas and new approaches have not been easy to come by. For a commodity- dependent country, like Malaysia, how should we respond when writers like Peter Drucker see no future for raw material producing countries because they have come "uncoupled" from the industrial economies? Likewise, since we are looking towards industrialisation to help solve our unemployment problem, the same message is repeated - namely, industrial production has also come "uncoupled" from employment, the argument being that the more competitive industries today are those that are technology and knowledge-driven, such as electronics, genetic engineering, pharmaceuticals and telecommunications.

And, of course, the impact of recent events in the world`s stock exchanges bear testimony to the sad observation that economic performance these days is becoming less dependent on underlying macro-economic fundamentals, and more on financial transactions based on rapid and massive capital movements, which are strongly linked to the vicissitudes of market sentiments. So far, the Government`s strategy for the private sector had been directed mainly at the provision of adequate incentives, including reducing the rates on corporate tax, electricity and communication charges, liberalising the guidelines governing equity participation in export-oriented industries, and deregulation to reduce cumbersome rules and procedures. If the economy is allowed simply to grow on its own momentum over the medium term, depending mainly on the fortunes of the international trading environment.

The present sitution calls for daring, innovative and imaginative entrepreneurs. The lessons of history tell us that the take-off to sustained growth in any society requires the existence, initiative and reasonable skill of some group which is prepared to take risks and venture into new enterprises. Indeed, the real remedies lie deep in human attitudes and behaviour. Granted, it cannot change overnight. But, as the current values and behaviour must have developed from a more primitive beginning, so can the process of value changes take of from the present ones. It remains for us to cultivate the right kind of changes. Our nation is blessed with abundant natural resources, which need either to be exploited raw or with varying degree of added value in order to yield handsome returns. Businessmen have been turning more and more to the financial markets with its promise of quick and substantial returns.

A financial market is only real and viable if it is backed by sound economic activity with growth of assets and dividends. Capital gains without real economic growth is like a growing skyscraper without foundation. Sooner or later it is going to crash down. As we are aware it has crashed on a worldwide unprecedented scale. Instead of waiting for the market to recover, businessmen should go back to doing business, to producing goods and services and marketing them at a profit. The stock market should be used to raise capital for these enterprises. If you must speculate, do so on a reasonable scale. There must be some relationship between prices and the performance of the enterprises. Computers should not totally displace humans in the buying and selling of shares. The old study and probe into the basic foundations of the companies must return as the basis for decisions to sell or buy. If there must be speculation, it should be sane and healthy.

Workers wages in this country are relatively higher than among our major competitors in the region. Since it is neither wise nor possible for wages to be reduced in order to bring down unit cost, the only thing that can be done is to increase productivity. While hard conscientious work by workers can definitely improve productivity, managers must also look into the system of working and the use of aids in order to improve productivity. Unnecessary and careless spending is another cause of high unit cost. In other words while workers play a role in determining the level of productivity, managers and other executives cannot be completely excused for poor productivity in any enterprise. It is imperative that Malaysian managers look critically at themselves as much as at their workers.

GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE ENHANCE QUALITY OF LIFE

All of you are well aware of the impact that the information revolution is already making on our social and economic institutions, on public and private sector bureaucracies, and on the man in the streets.....changing the way we do everything. While it holds the promise of a better life for everyone, it also threatens to create a huge disparity between the information-haves and the information-have-nots, the knowledge-rich and the knowledge-poor. This growing digital divide was the single driving concern of the first Global Knowledge Conference where more than 2000 people representing governments, international agencies, non-profit organisations, private sector corporations and NGOs, met in Toronto, Canada in 1997. It became obvious that the countries which were either unaware of, or did not have the means to harness the new tools of the information age, would be powerless to improve the quality of life of their peoples.

The first Global Knowledge (GK) Conference recognised that knowledge and information are critical for sustainable, and equitable development. Out of the conference there evolved an informal but powerful partnership of organisations now known as the Global Knowledge Partnership. It currently has 55 members. They are all committed to sharing information, experiences and resources to help people acquire the knowledge and technology they need in order to shape their lives. GKll is part of this ongoing process of sharing and learning. Dialogues and discussion at national and regional levels on issues of access, empowerment and governance - the three themes of the GKII - have already begun and will continue after March 2000. Access to ideas and information from around the world are already empowering people to improve their lives.

There are some dramatic examples of how the power of information can not just improve lives but also help save them. We know of how the Pan American Health Organisation conducted a hemisphere-wide teleconference to present new methods of diagnosing and preventing the spread of AIDS. Yet in countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia where the spread of AIDS is threatening a whole generation of young people, these support networks are not yet in place. With GKll and the Global Knowledge Partnership, we have a tremendous opportunity to draft an agenda for action that will give developing countries a fair and equitable share in the new knowledge economy. The whole event is being specially designed to ensure that the four days of discussion, debate, sharing of information, experiences, best practices and even failures, will result in a strategic plan of action to help us build knowledge societies.

Represented here today are members of the diplomatic corps, the corporate sector, NGOs, government agencies, the media and the community. Each of you has a very important role to play in the success of GKII. Malaysia active involvement at national, regional and global levels is critical to the success of this conference. Let us jointly contribute our resources to leverage this strategic opportunity to shape our future. Malaysia has set her own agenda for transformation into a knowledge-based economy by the year 2020. GKII will help us identify and address issues critical to the realisation of this vision. We can share our own experiences and highlight some of our achievements with regard to the implementation of the National IT Agenda and the Multimedia Super Corridor initiative. Perhaps our greatest challenge is to open people's minds to the tremendous possibilities offered by shared information and knowledge.

Ideally, every Malaysian should know about GKII, the Global Knowledge Partnership and the power of the new communications tools. We are hoping for your support, particularly the media, in publicising the issues and challenges for knowledge development, and the objectives and activities of GKII and the Global Knowledge Partnership

EFFICIENT GOVERNANCE: GEARING TOWARDS BEING WORLD CLASS

The effectiveness and efficiency of the public service as well as its facilitating role has helped the country's economic development. This we have accomplished through the introduction of numerous administrative measures which are designed to provide high quality services to the private sector and the society at large. To be world class, and at par with the best, we have to continue the quality revolution in the public service. In fact I would suggest we think of two Qs: Quality and Quickness. One of the important attributes of quality is to be responsive to customer needs and this means Quickness of Response. Members of the public want speedy approvals of their house plans, certificates of fitness for occupation of their newly-built houses, quick service at the immigration counters, at hospital dispensaries etc. The business community want quick approvals for company incorporation, trade licences, manufacturing licences, duty drawbacks, patent rights, approval of industrial premises, crucial market information on their products and services, etc.

If speed is the essence in doing business, then systems and procedures, particularly those that ensure accuracy, reliability, consistency and simplicity will have to be put in place. The public service will be implementing ISO 9000 very soon. Malaysia will be the first country that will adopt ISO 9000 in its entire public service. Gearing ourselves to world class means that we will gear ourselves to implementing ISO 9000. Training of public servants should emphasise the sharpening of core competencies covering the three broad areas of conceptual, technical and interpersonal skills. However, the emphasis will vary depending on whether the officer is in the upper, middle or lower levels of management. The conceptual skills are skills related to `higher order activity' more relevant to the upper level management where the need is to see issues, recognise problems, strategise, and think systems.

The middle level management needs a balance of both the conceptual and the technical skills as they act as the interface between the top level management and the lower level of management. However, across all levels of management is the requirement for interpersonal skills. No one works alone in any organization; people will have to network and build relationships at all levels of management vertically as well as horizontally. As such, training programs in public sector training institutions particularly INTAN will have to take into consideration these aspects of skills development focussing on core competency areas. World class also means the ability to command resources and operate beyond borders. In this regard, our public service should have the ability to support our private sector to effectively operate beyond our shores. There are many ways in which this can be done.

Firstly, in business, the question of integrity and image are very critical elements. In this connection, besides facilitating the business sector through enhancing the administrative processes, the public service must see itself as the custodian of Malaysia's good image overseas, and assist in the conduct of business with good ethics, to see that our businessmen conduct dealings with reputable partners overseas; secondly, the public service has to focus on establishing connections and networking; examine investment opportunities and facilitate the entry of Malaysian products and services to new markets. The country should never be allowed to suffer from a deep crisis of faith in the public service; the people must not criticise us as a faceless bureaucracy that is unable to accurately meet personalized services; the people must not be allowed to spend their precious time finding answers to their questions, after being bounced from department to department. The new information technology appears to be the key enabler of public service transformation.

LOCAL AUTHORITY AND WORLD BUSINESS COMPETITIVENESS

The current global economic challenges have put Local Authority in the front and centre of attention. They are under the microscope, their past actions are being scrutinized and their behaviour and actions going forward are being closely watched. They are expected to rise to the challenge and steer their organizations and corporations out of troubled waters that the world economy is now in. The business world is witnessing massive upheaval and scandalous revelations. The crisis calls for a re-examination of the corporate culture and the way business has been done. In some of the scandalous revelations in the US, it has proven that business as usual is not an option any more. That model has been broken. A new way needs to be found. It calls for active, innovative, aggressive leadership and bold decisions.

In view of this, effective leadership has never been more important. Periods of economic stress test the ability and capability of Local Authority and demands that they rise to the challenges. Crisis tests an individual’s abilities more than the good times ever do. Undoubtedly, most leaders will be tested by a few minor and major crises during their tenure. How the individual steers through such troubled times will show the mettle he or she is made of. The Local Authority of today are being tested on several levels, both internally and externally. While they may have some control over their internal environment, they certainly do not know what awaits them externally in the current volatile business environment.

Loyal and hardworking employees are the best asset of any organization, and yes, even in the high tech era and in the computerized age. It is important to retain talent and more so during difficult times. Strengthen and retain what them have. Pull Local Authority talent together and take decisive decisions. Do not let good talent get away. It will be more difficult to find them when the recovery comes, which will come, just as the sun will rise again tomorrow. Local Authority must train and equip staff with the appropriate knowledge and skills to enhance efficiency and improve competitiveness. R & D is important to develop new products, improve current product quality, improve production processes and technological capabilities. These cannot be ignored even during difficult times. And as businesses become more complex, decentralized and globally dispersed, the need for real time integrated information system is essential for improved communication, better analysis and for making quick and informed decisions for any corrective action that might be needed.

Today, the Local Authority is expected to be pro-active in contingency planning, to anticipate and prepare responses. Expediency in the appropriate response can negate losses. As the Chinese word for crisis, Wei ji, is composed of two characters signifying “Opportunity” and “Danger”, the current crisis with its many downsides also offers opportunities. It is necessary for business leaders and Local Authority to seek out the possibilities in these challenging times. Them must do this to remain relevant, sustainable and competitive. Leadership is a demanding role even during times of relative calm. It calls for balancing of internal and inter-business relationships and more so during a crisis, when courage and desire to lead well and effectively are put to the test.

GLOBALISATION: CHALLENGES AND IMPACT ON ASIA AND MALAYSIA

Globalisation is a word which seems to describe the coming together of all the countries of the globe into one entity. It is coined by rich countries apparently in response to technological advances and the speed and ease of travel. But the emphasis is on free flows of capital and trade in goods and services. People and other things may not flow so freely.Free means free of Governmental regulations, laws and policies. International institutions would take over, enact rules and enforce them. Looked at from the point of view of weak countries, rules, laws and policies still exist but they would have no say in the determination or enforcement. For most of them globalisation means not more freedom but less freedom from rules, regulations laws and policies. Worse still, these uniform rules etc, disregard their particular weaknesses and problems.

But they are being told that being poor they will benefit from capital flowing into their countries. In fact for many of the East Asian countries capital inflows have brought about unprecedented economic growth. Even their stock markets have benefited from foreign investments. But what they are not told is that the same capital can flow out and when it does their countries can be bankrupted. It is unfortunate that they learnt about this through experience and they now know how terrible the damage is and how difficult it is to recover. The East Asian financial crisis was precipitated by the free exit of capital. It started of course by the manipulative devaluation of the currencies of East Asian countries. Devaluation caused foreign investment to lose value. To avoid losses from further devaluation foreign capital was pulled out. The market collapsed resulting in rapid increase of non-performing loans, deprivation from bank funding of business operations, numerous bankruptcies and failure of the banking system in the end.

With the economy in tatters the Government had to borrow from the IMF. Loans would only be given if the Government surrenders economic management to the IMF and allow foreign white knights to pick up the devalued local banks and businesses. We are seeing many countries floundering about because the money they borrowed from the IMF had to be used to pay off foreign creditors. Nothing is left for the locals. Of course they still have to pay the IMF money they had borrowed. East Asian countries are actually luckier for some have made a fair degree of recovery. But Argentina is not so lucky. Sovereign loans are not so safe after all as countries can go bankrupt when IMF imposes its policies. Is what happened to the East Asian countries a manifestation of Globalisation or not? Clearly it is. Trading in currencies is only possible if Government abdicates as the authority to determine the value of currency and leaves it to so-called international market forces.

The market is interested only in making profits and cares nothing for the well-being of society. The challenge for Asia is not how to manage the present concept of globalisation, to make it work, to benefit from it. The challenge for Asia is to influence the thinking on globalisation, to reshape it, to reduce the chances of it going awry and destroying economies and countries. There is nothing sacred about the present concept of globalisation that it cannot be changed, radically if necessary, so that it will pose less danger to those accepting and practising it. Free trade is not synonymous with globalisation. If we have to regulate trade in order to benefit from globalisation, why not? People who play golf know that there will never come a time when handicaps will be abolished. In business too, fair competition can only be between entities of fairly equal strength. Level playing fields are not enough. The contestants must be evenly matched. If we cannot match them then give them handicaps.

Prior to 1997 the Asian countries were growing miraculously. Malaysia grew at 8% plus per annum for ten consecutive years. Today everyone of the miracle economies are but shadows of their former selves. The impact of globalisation involving the free flow of capital and the straightjacketing of business has been disastrous. For years now the attempts to resuscitate the economies have not been very successful. There will be permanent scars. And the impact will not be any better, for as long as the present interpretation of globalisation is forced upon Asia. In fact the world is likely to fail to recover if, instead of focusing on resuscitating the economy following Sept 11, we continue to force the globalisation of capital flows on the world.

GOVERNANCE FOR A NEW ERA

In the world today there is no trust or little trust and governance, world governance that is, is not good. We have in fact made a mess of the world. Two millennium of experience and mountains of knowledge have not made us much more capable at managing our affairs than stone age people.We now live in fear, every one of us. We fear the terrorists and the terrorists, their supporters or alledged supporters fear us. We fear flying, we fear travelling to certain countries, we fear night-clubs, we fear letters, parcels and cargo containers, we fear white powder, shoes, Muslims, pen knives, metal cutlery, etc etc. They, the other side, fear sanctions, starvation, shortage of medicine. They fear military invasion, being bombed and rocketed, being captured and detained. People who are neutral, not involved, innocent - they too live in fear. They are the collaterals. Just as the Afghans and the Iraqi civilians are collaterals the passengers on the hijacked planes and those people working in the World Trade Towers are also collaterals.

Actually we are in the midst of the Third World War, not the war against terrorists but the war between terrorists and the peace loving anti-terrorists alliance, the war between the Axis of Evil and Satan. Both sides are convinced that they are right, that theirs is the fight against evil. Evil and Satan must be destroyed. Frightened, the world is taking measures to secure and defend at tremendous cost. But the main result is not security or freedom from terror attacks. The main result is to disrupt life, undermine investments and business, and generally to adversely affect economic growth world wide. It is going to be a long war because hatred, anger, bitterness rules our hearts. We both want revenge. We both will retaliate. You kill our people, we will kill your people. And so it will go on and on. Sanity has deserted both sides. The world has become small. It is said to be a village.

But we have not made much progress in the management of our world despite its diminished size. Just as in the stone age the man with the biggest club rules, in our modern and sophisticated global village the country with the biggest killing power rules. When the Cold War ended we thought that the world would see peace and prosperity. After all the people who believe in peace and universal justice won. The evil Empire has been overthrown. But the loss of a counter balance has resulted in the great exponent of justice and fair play to become unbalanced. While the Communists were there the Capitalists curbed their greed and avarice. They showed a friendly face. The exploitation of the world by the greedy, the double standards and the hypocrisy about human rights and respect for human lives, the oppressions of the weak by the strong, the disregard for human sufferings; the expropriation of other peoples' land and the expulsion of the people, all these have been aggravated by the ending of the Cold War and the victory of the righteous over the evil.

The worm finally turned. The weak have now hit back in the only way they can. Groping for the enemy, the strong hits out blindly in every direction, in every part of the world. No one is free. Fear rules the world. With the onset of this third World War, the world is in a state of turmoil. We now live in fear, even the rich are not as prosperous any more, while the poor are actually poorer. We have not made such a good job managing this Global Village of ours. There is no trust and no good governance. So how do we create trust and good governance in the new era? I don't think it can be done by seeking for a military defeat of the enemy and forcing them to submit. The forces against the Axis of Evil are not going to win because the target is wrong. All that can happen if they are defeated is to create more anger and a call for more revenge and retaliation by the people who are incensed by the injustice they believe they are experiencing.

On the other hand the other side are not going to win either. The enemy is just too big and too powerful. The only solution is through compromise. Trust must be built. The initiation must come from the good people. They must recognise that people do not tie bombs to their bodies or crash their planes for the fun of it. They must have a reason for it. We have to remove the reasons. Out terrorising the terrorists will not work. But removing the causes for terrorism will. Good governance is simple if we curb the greedy and forget about self-regulating markets. Governments are not yet anachronistic. They have a role to play. We need a paradigm shift, we need a new mind-set if we are going to put an end to this Third World War. We need victory for both, a victory where both sides will benefit. The world is big enough and rich enough for everyone. There is no need to take everything for ourselves. A win-win solution is possible. If we can overcome our anger and hatred, our craving for revenge, our unlimited greed, we can manage the world and achieve trust and eventually good governance.

MALAYSIA COMPETING IN THE GLOBALISED WORLD:BECOMING A WORLD - CLASS PLAYER

Competition is endemic in human society throughout history. There is the competition between individuals, between societies, between cities and states, between nations and races. The original Olympic Games personifies this competition. It was between the Greek cities as represented by their athletes. But the essence of competition is that the competitors possess certain qualifying qualities. Cities do not compete with villages, nor adult athletes with children. To compete fairly the competitors must belong to distinct categories. In a globalised world we have to compete in order to succeed. But according to present rules of competing, there are no distinct categories. The smallest and poorest nations must compete with the biggest and the richest nations. The smallest local businesses must compete with the multi-national giants. The technologically backward must compete with the technologically advanced.

In the competition, rules and regulations are practically disallowed. The only rule is that there should be no rules, no rules about qualifying categories, no rules about the methods used by the competitors. But this is not completely true. While Governments may not restrict and protect, Governments must uphold the rights of the rich and the powerful to literally strangle the poor and the weak. It does not take a genius to see that the dice is loaded against the weak and the poor. They must rely on whatever little competitive advantage that they may have just to survive. But mostly they would lose the competition and they would go under. In Malaysia unions and workers understand that high pay is meaningless if the cost of living rises with the pay increase. In some developing countries all workers are millionaires but the money they earn cannot give them a decent living because all goods are priced in tens or hundreds of thousand of the currency unit. Higher wages are only worthwhile if there is no resulting inflation.

This can happen when productivity rises higher than wage increases. Besides we are competing against low wage countries with good productivity levels. Any increase in wages without productivity increase will reduce investments, not only by foreign investors but also local investors. With no new jobs being created there will be more unemployment. And a large unemployed population will force wages down. So we must always ensure that wage rises will not make us uncompetitive, raise the cost of living and drive away job-creating investments. Businesses should endeavour to bring down costs. If they examine carefully their cost of production or service they are bound to find cost items which can be reduced. Targeting a definite percentage for reduction of costs is very effective. Technology is a problem. The rich with their greater expenditure on research and development are bound to be ahead.

Buying technology from them would increase costs. But much of the technology is probably non-essential. Motor vehicles of today are over- engineered. We have to find a niche where basic needs are met by our products. In some cases the value can be enhanced without too much increase in costs. This high quality products will fetch prices higher than the cost involved in upgrading quality. The old Asian belief in cheap poor quality products as a way to penetrate markets should be forgotten. Good durable products are more likely to establish a permanent market. World class does not mean top class all the time. There are products which will be so high in quality that they will establish a class by themselves. But they are not for the main market, the big number of average consumers. For the biggest main consumer market competitive pricing for reasonable world class quality would be sufficient. While we try to compete in this unfair trading environment, we must continue to fight for a fairer global trade. It is going to be difficult but that is how life is. We have to resign ourselves to this, work hard and make use of whatever competitive advantage that we may have.

POSITIONING THE CITY OF KUALA LUMPUR IN THE GLOBAL CITY SYSTEM

In the age of globalization, it was argued that major cities in the region should be positioned in the global city system, in order for these cities and their immediate regions are effectively developed. As the urban and regional economic prospects increase reliance on the participation in the fast moving international and global economy, cities that are unable to adapt to these globalchanges and requirements would be marginalized. The marginalisation of major cities from the mainstream of global development will affect their progress and in most cases be determined by exogenous forces. At the same time, the emergence of new global economic and informational societies has created a new form of spatial development, the global cities. Such status was achieved only when a city and its region becomes a major center of international finance, transnational corporate headquarters, related high-level and specialized services, information processing and advanced telecommunications, a city with an international command and control functions (Sassen, 1991). To what extend the above criteria and indicators really described the position of cities in underdeveloped and developing economies? It is the intention of the paper to deal with such a question, with particular reference to the city of Kuala Lumpur. Although Kuala Lumpur has substantially part of the international economy for the past three decades, it was argued that the city exercises little of the global or even regional control functions that world cities proposes. For this reason, the authors argued that Kuala Lumpur and possibly other cities in the rapidly developing economies be positioned in a different setting, and with different criteria and indicators, as compared to the existing global cities.

KUALA LUMPUR TOWARD A COMPETITIVE GLOBALIZING CITY-REGION

Kuala Lumpur is one of the globalizing cities in Asia Pacific region. Competing with Singapore, Seoul, Hong Kong, Sydney, Jakarta and Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur has sought to reposition herself as a potential centre for global capital by implementing various strategies and developments. The repositioning of Kuala Lumpur in this global system of cities has brought about changes and adjustments of her city-region. Prior to the era of globalisation, the Klang Valley as a city region of Kuala Lumpur, has been recognized as a coherent urban planning region, covering four districts of Selangor state; Gombak, Klang, Petaling and Hulu Langat as well as the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur. However, from the late 1980s, Kuala Lumpur has strategisted policies what might be understood as a “global shift of development”. Through the development of mega projects, i.e., Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC), Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) and Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC), the city-region of Kuala Lumpur had been transformed, restructured and now become a high-tech city-region, known as Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan Area (KLMA), incorporating the districts of Sepang and Kuala Langat in addition to the existing Klang Valley region. In this context, the city-region of Kuala Lumpur played a key role to the future economic success of Malaysia within the context of the highly globalized economy, providing Kuala Lumpur a new dynamic and driving force of competitiveness toward achieving a status of global city. However, this has rise a question of, to what extent these forces have been transforming Kuala Lumpur particularly in the process of restructuring the functional landscapes of the city-region, in order to be more competitive and sustainable in the near future.

TRENDS IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN MALAYSIA

Local government in Malaysia occupies the third and lowest level after federal and state governments. Under the Malaysian federal constitution (paragraphs 4 and 5 of the Ninth Schedule), local government is the responsibility of the states, but the federal government also exercises considerable power and influence over local government, especially in peninsular Malaysia.1 The dynamic of the Malaysian federal system is such that it has shifted the balance of power to the centre. Local government accounts for only 1% of GDP. There are 144 local authorities divided into cities (major administrative and commercial centres), municipalities (other urban areas), and districts (chiefly rural areas). Executive powers rest with the Mayor (cities) or President, supported and/or overseen by a system of committees. Currently, local councils in Malaysia are not elected: councillors are appointed by the state government for 3-year terms (with the option of re-appointment) and in most cases come from the ruling coalition.

The current situation in Malaysia highlights the traditional top-down approach to local administration (Phang and Ahmad, 2001). However, global influences and growing community awareness are now challenging the practice of centralized administration, and local government leadership is being forced to reappraise its role and contribution in local affairs. The community seeks empowerment and to reinforce its right to be consulted inthe decision making process of its local council. Nonetheless, it seems unlikely that federal and state governments will accede to calls for greater devolution of powers, or to change the current system of appointment of councillors. This lack of political decentralization strains the relationship between citizens and their local councils: implementing administrative decentralization without adequate political reforms will result in formal harmony but informal discord. In the absence of a legitimate transfer of powers and increased accountability to the community, the local leadership may instead become primarily accountable to itself and to local elites (Phang, 2006). The system lacks the necessary link between decentralization and participation through democratic representation (Gaventa, 2004). Under such circumstances, questions arise as to the viability of local government within the federal system and its capacity to sustain challenges from an increasingly aware community. Its weakness in sources of finance, service delivery and community participation have given local government a negative reputation. Without elected councillors, further attempts at local government restructuring to make local government more transparent, accountable and efficient may well fail. It seems likely that decentralization will remain elusive with powers remaining consolidated at the centre.

WILL MALAYSIAN NEW DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES CAN POSITIONING KUALA LUMPUR IN THE GLOBAL CITIES?

Affirmative action as a policy response to ethnic riots is a fairly unusual, indeed unfashionable, policy response, partly because inequality and conflict have a complex and much debated relationship. General vertical income inequality, measured as the gap between poor and rich, has not been found to have a statistically significant relationship with the onset of civil unrest or conflict (Collier & Hoeffler, 2000; Fearon & Laitin, 2003). And yet, an accumulating body of evidence suggests that horizontal inequality, inequalities between identity or ascriptive groups on the multiple and inter-related planes of the political, the socio-economic, and the cultural, may be politically explosive (Stewart, 2001). The research examines these links between ethnicity, inequality and conflict among ethnic groups using a multidimensional approach, with a view to identifying those policies which might work in other situations of ethnic conflict.

Taking Malaysia as the model it is investigate and measure to what extent inequalities between ascriptive groups have fallen in that country between 1970 and 2000, a period during which various affirmative action policies were applied in fields ranging from education and government employment to business. Horizontal inequality in the key indicator of income is re-assessed, using an innovative group Gini decomposition method that can be applied in a relatively data scarce environment, which allows for the consideration of changes over time in the variance of the income distribution as well as changes in the means - which only provide a partial view of income inequality. In addition, changes in access by ethnic group to educational opportunities; the distribution of employment by sector and by occupation; urbanisation and housing distribuition; ownership of household assets such as houses and cars; and infant, toddler and maternal mortality rates are all considered individually, while a multi-dimensional index of socio-economic inequality is subsequently constructed for comparison purposes.

Regional disparity has long been recognized in Malaysian development scenario, particularly between the more-developed western region and the less-developed eastern and northern regions in Peninsular Malaysia. All the Five Year Malaysia Plans, starting from the Third Malaysia Plan (1976-1980) have placed special emphasis on the objectives and strategies of regional development. However in the decade of nineties, in conjunction with globalisation era, the direction of Malaysian development plans have been changed, towards becoming more competitive in the global economy. To some extend after 30 years, the issue of regional disparity is remains unsolved, and yet new emphasis on global competition has been dominated in development strategies and plans. However, analysing from the current achievement of national development, the position of Kuala Lumpur in the global cities network still unsignificant, reflecting the uneffectiveness of the strategies toward strengthening Malaysian competitivenes in global era.

URBAN MANAGEMENT VS URBAN GOVERNANCE IN GLOBALISATION ERA

We are living in a rapidly urbanizing world. Today half of the world population lives in urban area, yet as recently as 1975 the urban share was just over one third. Within these global averages, however, there are major differences. The urban share of the population in year 2000 in the developing countries for example was 76%, as compared to 40% in the less developed countries. In Africa and Asia the shares were 38% and 37%, whereas in Latin America, Northern America, Europe and Oceania the proportions were between 70%-77%. For the world as a whole, the urban share is expected to rise to 60% by the year 2030 at which time the shares for Africa and Asia are projected to reach 55% and 53% respectively.

Of the additional world population expected between 2000 and 2015, nearly one billion will be added in urban areas compared to only about 125 million in the rural areas. Virtually all of this growth will take place in developing countries. Urbanisation if well managed, is associated with economic growth and development, providing vital opportunities for economic and social advancement; whereas if not managed properly, may result in social disintegration, more poverty among some sectors and environmental degradation.

In the context of Peninsular Malaysia, according to the National Physical Plan, the level of urbanisation has increased from 54.3% to 65A% in the inter-censual period of 1991-2000, and it is expected to increase to 75% by the year 2020. Urbanisation in Peninsular Malaysia is also marked by the increasing primacy of the three main city regions of Kuala Lumpur, George Town, and Johor Bahru. Urbanlsation can be viewed as a positive or a negative force. The difference lies in whether the urbanisation process is planned, controlled and managed in a proper manner, or otherwise.

One of the main challenges of urbanization is to make sure that our urban area is competitive enough in achieving sustainable urban development. The potential between economic growth and environmental sustainability must be realised to its fullest. Ways must be developed to achieve pro-poor economic development and also to reduce the environmental impact of economic growth and urban production, both on the towns and cities themselves, and on the global environment - as urban economic development is often influenced by changes in national and global economic- Even when economic growth occurs, it does not necessarily benefit the poor. Therefore ways must be found to develop urban economic that are diverse, resilient and also provide job opportunities that are accessible to the poor and the disadvantaged.

The urban economy is of supreme importance to the economic development of developing countries in particular. We need to encourage the town and cities to be competitive to attract investors to invest in our urban area. While at the same time, protect the very resources including the environment, that is crucial in developing the urban economy and attracting the investors in the first place. Besides that, urbanisation is also associated with social and political changes, which can undermine traditional social network and result in increased inequity and exclusion. Therefore, ways must also be found to increase equity and ensuring political and social inclusion. Often this means that ways must be found to extend infrastructure provision to keep pace with urban growth, in a way that is financially and environmentally sustainable, while ensuring access of an adequate level of services to the poor and the disadvantaged.

Currently, the capability of governance of the agencies responsible is recognised as being very crucial in achieving sustainable urbanization. Therefore ways must be found to enhance urban governance to deal with the challenges of managing the growing towns and cities. At the same time, economic, environmental and governance tensions make it difficult to realise the benefits of interdependence between rural and urban areas. In this context, ways must be found to develop and implement economic policies, resource allocation, environmental management strategies, and governance arrangements that recognise and enhance the complementary rates of urban and rural areas in sustainable development. Indeed both urban and rural areas are interdependent. Sustainable land resource planning and management is the core of physical environmental management and biodiversity conservation. Concepts of sustainable development that integrate development and natural resource management objectives should be an integral part of a country's planning process and this should be reflected in all land use policies and plans. Such a spatial planning document for Peninsular Malaysia was launched recently.

The National Physical Plan (NPP) contains 36 policies related to land use and development. The successful implementation of the NPP depends on the collaborative efforts among all relevant stakeholders including private, Government agencies, NGO and communities. This Dialogue aims at imparting a better understanding of the policy's objectives and purpose and will among others, address issues related to urbanization. It also hopes to create further awareness and opportunity for participation from civil society in its implementation. This engagement will undoubtedly contribute to better environmental cooperation and collaboration among the NGOs and Government.

The responsibility to ensure a .sustainable development does not fall on the Government entirely. It is important that we all work together, making use of opportunities provided for public participation in the process. We need the involvement of all, in particular the NGOs. The Ministry would like to view MENGO as a partner in managing our environment. We regard NGOs to be a valuable asset since they have the advantage to be in -the midst of things and the ability to be close to the people. Therefore, they have better opportunity to disseminate information and instill the feeling of responsibility to the masses. At the same time the Government would like the NGOs to be our eyes and ears so that we are informed of what is happening on the ground.

In this regards, the Government welcomes positive and constructive criticism so that we can continuously improve our programme and activities in enhancing the quality of the environment. It is therefore fitting that this Dialogue should focus an getting to know the problems or challenges faced by the relevant Government agencies, in developing urban areas and the proposed plans and programme to overcome them. So that together, the Government and the NGOs can collaborate in addressing the gaps.

GLOBALISATION AND CITY-REGIONS

The concept of global city region is more directly rooted in the resurgence of interest in regions and regionalism than it is in the study of globalization or urban and metropolitan restructuring. Stated somewhat differently, the regional dimension of globalization and urbanization processes is what matters most significantly to the meaning of the term. It is the regional that absorbs and defines the interplay of globalization, urbanization, industrialization, and development, and grounds the concept of global city region in a particular form of analysis and interpretation. Over the past thirty years, there has not only emerged a pronounced cross-disciplinary turn toward critical spatial thinking and analysis but also a closely related development of specifically regional perspectives. This New Regionalism, as it has come to be called, has been playing a particularly important role in making theoretical and practical sense of globalization, economic restructuring, technological change, and other processes shaping contemporary life. Underpinning the New Regionalism is a significant re-theorization of the key concepts of region and regionalism.

Cities have been globalizing for many centuries. London and Amsterdam, for example, were global cities in the 16th century and still earlier cases of urban globalization can be found in commercial, imperial, and religious cities around the world. The link between globalization and urbanization processes is therefore not new, but there has been a growing realization that starting at least as early as the 1960s there has been a pronounced acceleration in the globalization of capital, labor, and culture and that this intensified globalization has been having significant effects on cities and urban life all over the world. Analyzing the impact of globalization on cities is thus the first step in understanding the concept of global city regions.

The effects of globalization on cities and urban development can be seen at two levels. Within cities and metropolitan regions, globalization has been playing a role in reconfiguring the social and spatial organization of the modern metropolis and in changing some of the basic conditions of contemporary urban life. Increasing global flows of labor and capital and the concentration of these flows in certain urban areas have contributed to the expansion of metropolitan populations to hitherto unheard of sizes, with several urbanized regions (or city regions) in East Asia now containing more than fifty million inhabitants. Beyond contributing to this expansion in population size, globalization has also fostered the creation of the most culturally and economically heterogeneous cities the world has ever known.

The concept of global city region is more directly rooted in the resurgence of interest in regions and regionalism than it is in the study of globalization or urban and metropolitan restructuring. Stated somewhat differently, the regional dimension of globalization and urbanization processes is what matters most significantly to the meaning of the term. It is the regional that absorbs and defines the interplay of globalization, urbanization, industrialization, and development, and grounds the concept of global city region in a particular form of analysis and interpretation. Over the past thirty years, there has not only emerged a pronounced cross-disciplinary turn toward critical spatial thinking and analysis but also a closely related development of specifically regional perspectives. This New Regionalism, as it has come to be called, has been playing a particularly important role in making theoretical and practical sense of globalization, economic restructuring, technological change, and other processes shaping contemporary life. Underpinning the New Regionalism is a significant re-theorization of the key concepts of region and regionalism.

22 JANUARY 2009 - 3rd YEAR ANNIVERSARY WE CONQUERED MOUNT KINABALU

CARREL...MY COSY PLACE... NEW STUDY SPACE IN PTSL

After 1 year study in UKM, finally I managed get my cosy and private place to do my research in UKM's library, Perpustakaan Tun Sri Lanang (PTSL). However, I can only use this room only 4 months and I have to apply again and wait another 4 months. I will fully utilise this room to do my research.

KUALA LUMPUR...IN GLOBAL CITY-REGION OR LOCAL CITY-REGION?

INTRODUCTION

There are now more than 300 city-regions around the world with populations greater than one million. At least twenty city-regions have populations in excess of ten million. They range from familiar metropolitan agglomerations dominated by a strongly-developed core such as the London region or Mexico City, to more polycentric geographic units as in the cases of the urban networks of the Randstad or Emilia-Romagna. Everywhere, these city-regions are expanding vigorously, and they present many deep challenges to researchers and policy makers as we enter the 21st century. The processes of world-wide economic integration and accelerated urban growth make traditional planning and policy strategies in these regions increasingly problematical while more fitting approaches remain in a largely experimental stage. New ways of thinking about these processes and new ways of acting to harness their benefits and to control their negative effects are urgently needed.

The concept of global city-regions can be traced back to the "world cities" idea of Hall (1966) and Friedmann and Wolff (1982), and to the "global cities" idea of Sassen (1991). We build here on these pioneering efforts, but in a way that tries to extend the meaning of the concept in economic, political and territorial terms, and above all by an effort to show how city-regions increasingly function as essential spatial nodes of the global economy and as distinctive political actors on the world stage. In fact, rather than being dissolved away as social and geographic objects by processes of globalization, city-regions are becoming increasingly central to modern life, and all the more so because globalization (in combination with various technological shifts) has reactivated their significance as bases of all forms of productive activity, no matter whether in manufacturing or services, in high-technology or low-technology sectors. As these changes have begun to run their course, it has become increasingly apparent that that city in the narrow sense is less an appropriate or viable unit of local social organization than city-regions or regional networks of cities. One tangible expression of this idea can be observed in the forms of consolidation that are beginning to occur as adjacent units of local political organization (provinces, Länder, counties, metropolitan areas, municipalities, départements, and so on) search for region-wide coalitions as a means of dealing with the threats and the opportunities of globalization. In this process, we argue, global city-regions have emerged of late years as a new and critically important kind of geographic and institutional phenomenon on the world stage.

KUALA LUMPUR CITY-REGION…GLOBAL OR LOCAL?

The dominance of a nation in a global economy has been directly linked to the emergence of global city; which become the global command and control centre, such as New York, London and Tokyo. Drawing on Kuala Lumpur’s experience and its city region, this thesis aims to analyse the city’s transformation, positionality, competitiveness as well as its niches in the global city network system particularly in the context of Asia Pacific region. The objectives of this thesis are explored and revealed through three main parts of this research. The first part concentrates on the description of the spatial and functional transformation of Kuala Lumpur and its city region, through its national and supranational economic engagement over the past four decades. Based on secondary data, the study reveals that Kuala Lumpur city region had experienced substantial spatial and functional transformation, beginning particularly in the early 1990’s.

This suggests that Kuala Lumpur has responded positively to the exogenous and endogenous forces, and is integrated in the mainstream of global economy. Nevertheless, do these changes elevate Kuala Lumpur to a global status, often measured with reference to existing indicators of global cities? This question has been dealt in the second part of the research. Using a set of questionaire, a field study has been carried out on 61 respondents, comprised chief executive officers from two groups of samples. These groups are, firstly FORTUNE Global 500 firms operating in the Klang Valley; and secondly the MSC’s (Multimedia Super Corridor) status companies. Perception of respondents pertaining to the city’s indicators, positionality, competitiveness and its niches are then measured in likert scale and statistically tested using Mann-Whitney U test.

Hamzah Jusoh in his PhD research on Kuala Lumpur in Asian Pacific City Regions Network showed that Kuala Lumpur’s achievement has to be complied to the same set of indicators, applicable to cities in developed countries. This is inevitably to ensure Kuala Lumpur to be as competitive as cities in the developed countries. By using validated indicators and measured through the Index of Global Cities Indicators, the study reveals that the global-city region of Kuala Lumpur has positioned herself at the intermediate level in the global city network system, with the index value of 61.61%. What does its mean in term of competitiveness, comparative advantages and niches of Kuala Lumpur in the Asia Pacific region? This has been dealt in the third part of the thesis, which focuses on a comparative study with selected global cities in the Asia Pacific region. Based on the primary data sources obtained from questionaires as well as supporting secondary informations, this study reveals that Kuala Lumpur is relatively positioned in a less dominant role compared to the other cities in the region, such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Sydney and Seoul. However, its position has been somewhat better than Shanghai and Bangkok.