Chong views State R&D Council as redundant
CHONG Chieng Jen ( DAPKota Sentosa) strongly opposed the Sarawak Research and Development Bill 2017, which was passed at the State Legislative Assembly yesterday because he viewed it as redundant.
“We support research and development ( R& D) as this will bring about economic growth. But we viewed that the setting up of the Research and Development Council is redundant for it is just to coordinate all the research centres and institutions,” he told reporters when met at the end of morning session of DUN Sitting yesterday.
Coordination, he said, can be done by assigning a few officers from the ministry.
“Looking at the composition of the Council of six to 12 members, these people will be sitting in the council on par with the Chief Minister. You can imagine their remuneration will be at least Grade 53 or 54 and they will also be paid as council members including pension,” he added.
Chong emphasised that this will be a huge burden on the state coffer for appointments said to be not necessary.
Instead of paying members to sit in the Council, who may not even be qualified because the Bill does not state the requirement of qualification, he said it will be wiser to use the money to pay true researchers higher salary and attract better and qualified people to come and do research.
“Basically the setting of this council does not help in genuine research works. For developing country, according to one of the policy papers of the World Bank, you can do R& D work in areas on the catch-up technology and not technology frontier area because you just don’t have the environment to come out with any breakthroughs,” he said.
“Focus on catch-up technology and how to innovate and to bring more benefits to our economy,” he added.
Chong pointed out that this is the problem with the state government which does not address the issues when they surfaced but create a committee or appointed authority to look into the problem.
“So at the end of the day, you have so many authorities set up that become a very huge burden on the state coffer.
“By the look of it, Abang Johari seemed to be going along that line, the Umno way of governing which we, our children and our future generation are going to pay for,” he added.
Chong reiterated his opposition for the Bill was not because he was against R& D but that he saw no necessity in the setting up of the Council.
The soon-to-be-formed Sarawak Research and Development Council will be a statutory body to oversee the promotion, coordination and advancement of research and development (R&D) in Sarawak.
Education, Science and Technological Research Minister Dato Sri Michael Manyin Jawong said the council, which will be headed by Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Abang Johari Tun Openg will have several functions and duties including to create, develop, apply for and hold intellectual property (IP) rights arising out of R&D under the Sarawak Research and Development Council Bill, 2017 Ordinance and to enter into arrangements with any person, organisation or institution for the commercial application of such (IP) rights.
With the establishment of the council, there will be collaboration and coordination with research bodies in the state and enable the commercialisation on their findings.