THE Facebook page of the Consumers’ Association of Penang carried a report on Tuesday titled “When professionals abuse their positions of trust”.

It highlighted how an architect tried to help a developer cheat buyers of their entitlement to liquidated ascertained damages (LAD) for late delivery of their housing units in Southbay Plaza @ Puncak South Bay, Batu Maung, Penang.    

He had issued the Certificate of Completion and Compliance (CCC) about two months before electricity supply was ready for connection, which is a mandatory requirement.

What this means is that the electric cables reaching the doorsteps of the houses where the meter is located must be “live” before the CCC can be issued.

Thus, immediately upon taking the keys from the developer, the owner can pay the electricity deposit and get the meter installed. This was not the case as confirmed by the TNB.

So, the housing units had been delivered in a condition yet unfit for living. The delivery of vacant possession was null and void.

One purchaser took the developer to the house-buyer claims’ tribunal and won LAD of RM15,715.

This project has about 200 units and it is not known whether any other purchaser had also filed claims in the tribunal. At a round figure of RM15,000 LAD per unit, the total for 200 units amounts to RM3 million.

For the illegal and unethical act of trying to save RM3 million for the developer, the architect was “severely reprimanded” (does it mean anything?) and fined a paltry RM25,000.

What message does this send to others in the profession, if not that it pays to do illegal and unethical things?

When professionals sit on judgment of their peers, (the Board of Architects is made up of architects, and three members of the board constitute the disciplinary committee) and allow themselves to be affected by feelings of camaraderie (“we are birds of the same feather and you help me, I help you”), and impose sentences such as in this case, they inadvertently erode the ethics of the profession.

It is the “soft-hearted” penalties that have encouraged the black sheep in the professions to be emboldened to break the law and/or the professional code of ethics and go laughing to the banks.

The disciplinary committees of the various professional bodies have no moral duty to take care of the rice bowls of the black sheep.

If the black sheep are to be weeded out, and the prestige and dignity of the professions is to be restored to the high standards of the 1950s and 1960s, then penalties that would send shivers down the spines of the black sheep must be imposed, i.e. the maximum monetary penalties provided and if a lesson is not learnt, then the next step should be deregistration.

This to some people may sound very harsh, but when dealing with highly educated people who have no ethical values, it is the proper way to deal with them.    

All the professional bodies should weed out the black sheep among them to restore the high standing of their professions.

And this should be done by the boards with iron fists and not kid’s gloves. They should not expect the public to file for judicial reviews of the disciplinary boards’ “soft” decisions (where the complainants are seeking compensation, especially in the legal profession cases) as not all can afford to do so. This only further emboldens the black sheep. – January 7, 2021.

* Ravinder Singh reads The Malaysian Insight.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.