The tip-off to this series of postings came from talks within the IT industry. Maybank has lots of vendors and the staff and management have networking with industry people through participation in courses, conferences, and conventions.
Words do come around. Only last week one IT staff of a GLC was talking about it. He said it has been the talk of the industry. By the second part, quite sure insider will be contacting us to tell more.
Few words from commentators to yesterday posting was interesting and useful. One highlighted that members of the Board of Trustees (BoT) of Yayasan Bumiputera are all Melayu, Board of Directors (BoD) of PNB are all Melayu [see here] and some 7 members of Board of Directors of Maybank [see here] are Melayu including the Chairman.
How could this had happen? Did the two ANSARA Seremban - Dato Abdul Wahid Omar or now successor, Dato Farid Alias - failed to monitor the organisation under their watch?
As one Chinese friend kept telling us, the people that screwed Melayu are not Chinese but the Melayu themselves. He notice Melayu, from humble beginning that went up the social and economic ladder through NEP, foresaken their fellow Melayus.
As highlighted in the previous posting, it is not about Maybank should only employ Melayu. It never had such a policy before and should not turn it into a Malay ghetto like Bank Bumiputera used to be. How could an organisation under the watch of Melayus that was never racial could now be perceived by their fellow Melayus as practising "ethnic cleansing" on their own?
Do our NEP-benefited and groomed top Malay executives not care any more to help give their breathen a break that they must be more 1Malaysia by allow discrimination on their breathen? Cina tolong cina, apa salah Melayu kasi peluang yang adil pada Melayu lain?
To substantiate such allegation, it is too tedious and lengthy to prove legally. Court decisions do not necessarily be the truth. So this is a version of the truth from the perspective of our Malay sources who notice the trend developing over the years. It has similarity to MAS under Dato Idris Jala though as another Bumiputera, he may have no such intention.
One ex banker commented at 4.03 AM on the inability of Malays (some Malays we presume) to meet up the needs of the industry. Partly true but hear us out first.
"Ethnic cleansing"
Maybank website credited him with the "success"of the LEAP30 programme to improve performance. To the IT industry people observing Maybank from afar, LEAP30 was no big deal.
Out of 30 program being planned to transform Maybank into a Regional Bank, only one program was launched. It was a failure!
The one successfully launched program was described as quote and unquote successful because subsequently, they allegedly managed to hoodwinked management and the BoD with a program called IT Transfomation Programme (ITTP).
ITTP was given a budget of RM2.7 billion, given a time frame of 5 years and encompass 16 transformation program. Again, as sources revealed, only 3 programs got launched. Since sources are outsiders, they are not sure the 3 launched programs was a success or not.
Every other IT guys and gals were aware that Maybank were hiring people by the busloads to do their ITPP. Sources believed it was few hundreds if not a thousand.
One would expect that they were to be hired as contract workers in accordance with the practise of the day. When their contract expires, the best will be picked as permanent staff.
No .... the Canadian educated and Balkan ethnicity Geoff took them in as permanent staff and most of them turned out to be non-Malays. Maybe Malays were not up to the mark and have poor command of English, thanks to millitant pejuang bahasa like A Samad Said.
So by the time, ITTP was sent to the dumpster, Maybank had an overload of humans instead of IT machines!
In line with the fashion of Tun Abdullah era and early days of Dato Najib, consultants were hired and they were exorbitantly expensive. Do not be surprise that names like Ethos, PW, McKenzie, or Booze Allen Hamilton were hired. They need brand names that leadership acknowledged.
The talk among consultants is that Maybank was like Government. They hired consultants but they hardly used their advise. What do they care? They got paid handsomely.
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| Geoff got ESOS despite failures of LEAP30 and ITTP at the expense of Melayus' jobs! |
Geoff was well compensated to do this so-called "ethnic cleansing" under the name of transformation.
So when it failed, these people need to point finger at someone. It will definitely not be management. The boss is always right. When the boss is wrong and decided wrongly, it will always be because the Managers under or the staff working did not perform to KPI.
Furethermore, KPI is a convenient scapegoat serve to quantify the unquantifiable and be abused to screw on those with the qualitative credentials.
Industrial relation
They thought Industrial Relation are fair, liberal and diplomatic people like the Public Relations people.
For those that got entertained by vendors, they thought IR are friendly as Guess Relation Officers or GRO at sleazy lounges though it is just "you got money you my flen....".
They are people with relation to Industrial Court la ... If the IR people fix you up, some will say serve them right for their ignorance. It is not morally right to take advantage of peoples' ignorance.
IR are programmed to win it for the Bank, and not for the staff. Their investigation motive is not about being fair or not but whether they can pin you or not. It does not bother them that the bosses of the IT Department had cleverly and allegedly fix them up.
That is what the likes of Nora Manaf could do [see here].
The talk in the IT circle is that several heads were chopped off based the mere accusation by bosses that systems were not tested. Some were forced to resign. The heads include a former winner of CIO of the year and some was rehired as CIO of other organisation.
Not all are Malays but so happen majority of the victims and the upcoming victims are Malays.
Upon enquiry with some old friends in Maybank, the IR that took the IT Department cases were mostly non-Malays, sorry to say Chinese in fact and Managers under Geoff's are also mostly Chinese. Maybe Geoff developed prejudice against Malays during his days at Southern Bank and too much interaction with his Chinese subordinates.
Still waiting for the names. It is heard that since 2008, more than 25 Malay executives from EVP to AVP had been removed. Many more coming with another scheme to "massacre" through subsidiarisation.
Slept on the job
Ultimately, the blame should go to Dato Najib as Chairman of YPB but he just finished an intense interview yesterday thus give him a break. The day to day operations is the purview of management.
Representing management on the BoT of YPB is Tun Ahmd Sarji. Things such as this happened under his watch. He should be in the know and inform the PM of such happening.
Ahmad Sarji is a doyen of public administration, The 76 year old was instrumental in Tun Dr Mahathir's aggresive phase of the NEP implementation. He was Deputy Director General of EPU from 1976-81 and subsequently was in MARA, JPA, and MITI till he became KSN for 1990-96.
Upon retirement, he filled the chair of a legendary civil servant of impeccable integrity and respectable standing, Tun Ismail Ali and remain till the present day. It means Ahmad Sarji was of a certain standing to fill up that shoe. Ismail Ali was PNB Chairman for 18 years and Ahmad Sarji is there for already 19 years.
It is sad to say this but was it a case of too much "Pukul tiga pagi" for the P Ramlee's biggest fan that he missed such alleged discriminatory happenings in the PNB Groups of Companies?
To be continued
Part 1