No Other Choice but MS:ISO

Most people have some amount of useful knowledge and marketable skills acquired through sheer hard work. Some are born with natural insight and tremendous brain power. Very few are gifted with exceptional talents. However, there will always be that unfortunate soul every now and then who has nothing – no knowledge, no skills, no talent and no inherent ability to acquire new skills and craftwork....

When one is not capable of treating dysentery, one needs to earn a living through verbal diarrhea....



MS:ISO And The Prevention of Crime

Many organizations in Malaysia are currently obsessed over ISO accreditation. It’s all around us - private, government and government-linked companies are not spared.

For those who are unfamiliar with ISO accreditation, it is simply this: professionals like doctors and nurses will be instructed by non-medical personnel how to run their wards and manage their patients in the seemingly most organized, tried and tested manner.

More often than not, it means unrelenting and strict rigidity. It means filling up every single form completely and in double copies even when it brings no benefit to patients. It is keeping tons and tons of useless records and statistics even when there are no concrete plans to act on the data. It revolves around slogans and acronyms and more slogans that are not put to practice. It’s the emphasis on style over substance, like decorating the depressing general wards with bright pink posters and banana yellow ribbons and not attending to the elderly patient whose bedsores are drowning in foul-smelling diarrhea faeces. As I am in healthcare, it was only natural for me to use healthcare as an example.

In Malaysia, ISO accreditation programs are run and managed by SIRIM. Other organizations similar to SIRIM is the Institut Tadbir Negara (INTAN) and the Biro Tatanegara in the Prime Minister’s Department.

I support organizations like SIRIM, INTAN and programs like ISO accreditation and National Service and the brainwashing Kursus Induksi compulsory for all civil servants.

Surprise? Let me elaborate.

Most people have some amount of useful knowledge and marketable skills acquired through sheer hard work. Some are born with natural insight and tremendous brain power. Very few are gifted with exceptional talents. However, there will always be that unfortunate soul every now and then who has nothing – no knowledge, no skills, no talent and no inherent ability to acquire new skills and craftwork.

Like the rest however, such a person needs to make ends meet and feed his litter of half dozen kids back home.

That is where organizations like SIRIM, INTAN, Biro Tatanegara and programs like National Service, Kursus Induksi and all other stupid government programs come in. You see, when one has no talent, skills or knowledge, one needs only to be parrots of the ruling party. When one is not capable of treating dysentery, one needs to earn a living through verbal diarrhea.

Read from a text and call it a speech. Show a slide and consider it a lecture. Point at a picture and call it analysis. Lay out some graphs and label it as statistics. Present some data and term it research. Do that every day of one’s life, then retire and receive life-long government pension.

SIRIM, INTAN, BTN – these bodies play a far more important role than the Polis Diraja Malaysia in preventing and reducing crime in Malaysia.

If there were no such redundant organizations and their corresponding stupid programs, I’m afraid that the unemployment rate and therefore crime in Malaysia could be much higher. These unskilled, unknowledgeable and untalented people will find no employment anywhere else and resort to a life of robbery, thievery and snatch.

So the next time you have those SIRIM officers going around scrutinizing your daily work, keep the cool and have some sympathy. It’s not easy living without skills, talent and knowledge. And as for all who are attending Kursus Induksi currently, please bear with that fat idiot up on stage giving a lecture on May 13. He can’t bullshit like the Sabah state neurosurgeon but he’s trying nonetheless. Appreciate the effort at least.