ALL CRACKED UP: Lack of quality, experience cause of defects
17/06/2007 By: Elizabeth John

One building defect after another and we are suddenly asking where all the good workmen have gone.

IN the wake of falling, cracking and bursting building parts comes a sobering realisation — we’ve lost many of the skilled hands that once lovingly placed every tiny nut and bolt in its place and made sure they would stay there.

In the past decade, anywhere between 50,000 to 100,000 skilled construction industry workers could have left Malaysia for greener pastures, estimates Yap Yoke Keong.

Much of the exodus took place when the industry fell into a slump in the last few years, added the secretary-general of the Master Builders Association Malaysia.

With few opportunities at home, skilled workers left for projects outside the country or simply changed their profession, says Yap.

The industry lost many experienced site supervisors and engineers to billion-dollar construction booms in the Middle East, India and Pakistan.

Along with them went the carpenters, wiremen, plumbers and technical assistants.

But now that the good times are back, the industry is finding it difficult to get the skilled workers they need.

"The construction industry now is reliant on foreign workers, mostly from Indonesia and few come trained for the job," he says.

Yap was hardly surprised when the Malay Contractors Association described the problem last week and went on to link shoddy workmanship by unskilled foreign labour to the string of building defects that hogged the headlines.

One of the biggest problems contractors now face is the lack of trained staff who can interpret and explain technical drawings and make sure workers know what to do on-site.

For most contractors, it’s a case of advertising and hunting around for workers available in the market when a building job comes by.

But there’s really little choice and the association is concerned, says Yap.

"Now contractors are pinching staff from one another and this could affect thousands of projects under the Ninth Malaysia Plan."

There could be trouble, says Yap, because there is direct relation between quality and skills.

Skilled workers know how to do a job to specifications. The standard of work will be good, he says.

Even the Construction Industry Development Board admits to having problems getting trainees for wet trades — bar bending, form working, concreting, tiling, plastering and bricklaying.

Foreign workers now dominate these fields, the CIDB said in a response to questions from the New Sunday Times.

Such work is energy intensive and tedious, explains Datuk Roslan Awang Chik, who heads the Malay Contractors Association.

"The popular term used to refer to these types of jobs in the industry is the 3Ds — dirty, dangerous and difficult. Not many Malaysians want to do this," he says.

Roslan finds that foreign workers, though crucial in filling the gap, aren’t very committed and don’t always understand the system here.

Of those who come to work here, some have little experience while others have none at all. None have accreditation from their country of origin either, he says.

These days, contractors find that they sometimes have to set up samples — build a section of the wall and show the workers the finish they expect.

Foreign workers are often tested on the job.

"You can tell in a few hours of work if they can actually do what they claim they can."

All a contractor needs, really, is a few skilled workers from each trade to head the squad of workers doing a particular job, says Roslan.

But even these kepala, or heads, are tough to find.

For small-scale contractors, the problem is particularly pronounced.

L.Y. Tan says he has absolutely no choice but to employ foreign labour because it is very expensive to employ a local skilled worker.

The difference in cost is almost 100 per cent and it would take a huge chunk out of already very slim margins, says the contractor.

"But then, you lose out on quality and experience. You’ll never get someone who can read drawings, who knows what they are doing," he says.

Contractors depend a great deal on networking and often go around asking other contractors if anyone can spare a carpenter, for instance.

Often, they just have to go to an agency that supplies them with foreign workers and most of the time, they are unskilled and projects don’t turn out well.

Tan, in the past, has had to bear huge losses simply because lack of experience and skills meant the workers needed almost double the time to finish the job.

And that’s saying nothing on the time and resources spent fixing problems later.

Yet he wouldn’t blame the problem of building defects entirely on workers, skilled or unskilled.

He says buildings go through a host of people who are meant to supervise and it’s as much their responsibility to ensure everything is in order.

The CIDB cites lack of supervision among a string of reasons for poor quality buildings and defects but agrees that lack of skilled workers is a problem.

If this isn’t enough of a headache for an industry suddenly assailed by falling bits of office buildings, there’s the sharp rise in building material cost to worry about.

"Just take the price of steel, it’s gone up twice this year. When this happens, the price of every single item that has a steel component goes up, too," says Malay Contractors Association secretary-general Datuk Osman Abu Bakar.

The price of plywood and tiles have risen, too.

"This may lead to problems like the use of inferior materials.

"And if the situation continues, we foresee that there will be many sick and delayed projects in the near future," says Osman.

There will be contractors who can’t keep to the tender price and as a result, there may be failures, he adds.

"At the end of the day, it’s the public, the consumer, who ends up paying."