Some 10 years after MSC, most Ministers still don’t use email
It has been quite a hassle just to get the email addresses of the Ministers of our jumbo Cabinet.
I had asked my assistant Lau Weng San to prepare a list of the emails of all the Ministers so that I can send them my email asking them to assume collective responsibility for the deep and worsening higher education crisis, together with my three proposals for world universities in Malaysia.
When I completed drafting my email at around noon and I turned to the Ministers’ email list which Weng San had spent the whole morning preparing, I was shocked that there were ten Ministers which were blank, without emails.
The ten Ministers are: Dr. Abdullah Zin (PM’s Office), Shafie Apdal (Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs), Hishammuddin Hussein (Education), Lim Keng Yaik (Energy, Water and Communication), Syed Hamid Albar (Foreign), Dr. Shafie Salleh (Higher Education), Ong Ka Ting (Housing and Local Government), Dr. Fong Chan Onn (Human Resources), Rafidah Aziz (International Trade and Industry) and Peter Chin (Plantation Industries and Commodities).
Weng San said he checked the websites of the various Ministries concerned and just could not find the email addresses of their Ministers.
I instructed Weng San to phone up the offices of the ten Ministers to get their email while I sent out my email to the Ministers with email addresses. Two emails were instantly returned, Mustapha Mohamed (Minister in the PM’s Department) and Abdul Aziz Shamsuddin (Rural and Regional Development).
As I am using gmail, I received the following response in connection with my email to Mustapha from “Mail Delivery Subsystem mailer-daemon@gmail.com” which said:
“This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification. Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently: datopa@epu.gov.my”
In the case of Aziz Shamsuddin, I got this response from MAILER-DAEMON@mail.rurallink.gov.my, saying:
“Hi. This is the qmail-send program at mail.rurallink.gov.my.I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.”
Later in the evening, I got this report from Weng San on his efforts to get email addresses from the 12 Ministers without email or proper email:
Rafidah’s office is only willing to release this email address to me: pejmenteri@miti.gov.my
As for Datuk Mustapa, his PA, fauziah. said there is some problem with his email (datopa@epu.gov.my) and advised me to also send to her, fauziahmad@epu.jpm.my
I managed to ring up Ministry of Higher Education. An officer gave me Shafie’s email address (drshafie@mohe.gov.my) but his PA remained unavailable for me to confirm whether they received your email or not.
I called up the Plantation Ministry (Peter Chin Fah Kui) as well but I was given his PA’s email address: pybm@kppk.gov.my.
Ong Ka Ting’s secretary only gave me menteri@kpkt.gov.my but advised me to fax your email to him. I had faxed it out already.
Nobody from Fong Chan Onn picked up my call and ksm@mohr.gov.my is the only email address published on their web.
Nobody from Education Ministry, Foreign Affairs Ministry and Datuk Abdullah Mohd Zin (Minister in the PMO) answered my call.
For the rest of the ministries which I managed to get their ministers’ email addresses, I did a follow up call but there was either no response (probably still on holiday), or the PAs were unavailable for information.
Instead of publishing ministers email address on the web, some ministries prefer to ask visitors to leave their contact details and complaints with the ministries' websites.
I also managed to talk to Nor Mohamed Yakcop’s PA and she confirmed receipt of your email. The only positive news so far.
It is clear that there are at least four categories of Ministers with regard to use of email:
(1) Ministers who have no email address for the public to access.
(2) Ministers whose public email are not functional.
(3) Ministers who do not open their own email.
(4) Ministers who do not open their own email or read the email opened for them
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