According to a recent expose by Terence Fernandez and R. Nadeswaran in The Sun newspaper, the government now wants to pump in an additional RM20 million to revive the park, and accusations are flying between the park’s consultants and the Malaysian Wetlands Foundation (MWF). Amidst revelations of questionable practices by former MWF CEO Muralee Menon regarding cheques, consultants and suppliers refusing or being unable to provide services due to late payments, breach of contract and the clashing vision of MWF and its engineers and consultants, the main question I would like answered is not HOW Paya Indah Wetlands failed, but rather WHAT can be done to prevent it from happening again. RM 68 million is by no means chicken feed and for another fiasco like that to happen again would be simply unacceptable.

Now, let’s take a look at how the government and the MWF could have saved RM68 million if they had done things a bit differently mixing compromise, understanding and support in order to come up with viable solutions.

• MWF CEO Muralee Menon: While his practice of being the sole signatory to some of the cheques was not illegal, financial experts had long advised that this was not the most prudent of practices. One wonders if Menon had consulted financial experts before deciding to be the sole signatory for the cheques.
• No compromise: A large part of the management of the project wanted the consultants to spend their own resources with MWF due to reimburse them. Instead, the payments were late and some payments were not even made. This made the consultants unable to afford to provide their services anymore. Even the man on the street can tell you that paying your service provider later for services that were rendered much earlier will result in a disgruntled and unhappy service provider. Here, perhaps a compromise should have been worked out, maybe a 30% or 50% downpayment for services so that the consultants could keep doing their jobs with peace of mind.
• No understanding: Take one part consultant, two parts expert and the vision and practices of MWF. What do you get? Many parties who can’t agree with one another. Consultants and experts in their fields were suspended from working with the MWF if their views differed from that of MWF’s vision. Here, it’s pretty clear that too many cooks spoiled the broth and one way or another, there was neither understanding nor compromise coming from various parties even though they had to work closely together on the project.
• Ridiculous projections: One must be realistic when mapping out long term profit plans when running one’s business. Trying recoup the 2.5 million for wetland’s annual operations cost by charging the public only RM 10 per entry is unrealistic, unachievable and beyond comprehension. Again, perhaps a visit from financial experts would have been needed here.
• Refusing to listen: Wetlands International Asia Pacific (WIAP) executive director was initially involved in formulating the project’s masterplan. He had wanted to keep the costs down, focusing on the natural resources of the wetlands as the main attraction. Instead, other parties wanted elaborate, costly structures to be erected. These parties felt that they knew better and eventually, the WIAP were cut off from working with the Paya Indah Wetlands management. If the management had just listened to the various reasons from WIAP on why they should NOT build a market square, a floating horse trail and a luxurious restaurant on the wetlands, millions of ringgit would have been saved.

There are probably many other unreported reasons why the Paya Indah Wetlands

Park is now a RM68 million waste of public funds. But from what has been reported in the papers, it’s clear that the fiasco could have been avoided with one simple thing: better management practices. Now, assess the management team of your organization. Are things being run in a proper, sensible and professional manner?