Star Online highlighted RM200 million collected through uCustoms as title of the news report Brilliance Information Sdn Bhd (Brinfo)'s HR, Corporate and Finance Director, Amar Haiza Ishak denial that the uCustoms system did not kick off.
The full report is not available to non-subscriber but Malay Mail Online also reported her denial that the system failed.
To recap back yesterday's posting here, the system commenced in October 2014 and is supposed to be delivered on November 1st 2016. It has repeatedly been delayed upteen times till Royal Malaysian Customs Department (RMCD) stopped the project in December 2020.
Amar claimed it was running for 22 months, and collecting millions. RMCD collects on average RM40 billion tax a year and about RM80 billion during the GST era.
Its not worth calculating the prorata collected for 22 months as comparison because RM200 million collected is pittance and hardly an indicator of a successful system.
uCustoms is not up and running fully, but ran concurrently and linked to the earlier Sistem Maklumat Kastam (SMK) she rubbished in her PC as "illogical to roll back to SMK for all the manual processes again".
Despite being downgraded as illogical by Amar, Brinfo's uCustoms would logically be still reliant on the SMK system to derived the data and book in the collection. Its hardly an indication the Brinfo's system as brilliantly displayed in their presentation has succeeded.
If RMCD is confident with uCustom, which she claim has the support of the Shipping Association of Malaysia (SAM), why then it not allowed to operate on its own but instead, stop the 5-year not delivered system?
On the contrary to her claim that "the words of SAM were enough to show that the uCustoms system was not only operational, well accepted among industry players, but also profitable for the government agency", it is not fully operational.
She lied.
The 5-year extended non-delivery is more than sufficient ground for RMCD to halt the project and Brinfo should refund the full or part of the RM273 million paid by Treasury.
Its too bad and unfortunate that the negative publicity affected the company's reputation and relation with existing clients. For not delivering after given 5 year extension, there will not be sufficient explanation for RMCD to answer to the Treasury and public.
To extract from MMO report, "The LKAN report included how the project costs ballooned from RM317.78 million to RM397.43 following the five extensions, with RM272.99 million already paid out, and that feasibility studies were not conducted before the project was implemented."
Back in November 2013, two year before Brinfo first delivery dateline, an anonymous commentator wrote:
Such a big project without a Proof of Concept will bound to fail.u-Customs is using COTS product therefore customization will be reduced. But does Brilliance Info solution used a real COTS?Microsoft is just a platform....Micro Clear and Greenlane...what are their experience. I heard a middle east country is replacing the Micro Clear system so why are we using them? Again no Proof of Concept or clarification been called....weird for a such big project...We hope PAC, AG and MACC look into this :)
Not sure what their lawyer hope to achieve from the press conference, the best thing Amar and Brinfo to do is "pergi Balai cerita ....".