Friday, October 16, 2009

Elected or Appointed into MHF - "Some are there just to add to the numbers"

MHF has 10 elected posts while there are 3 Independent members who are appointed. The Chairman of the various Committees like the Coaching, Development, Umpires, Disciplinary and so forth are also appointed position. Some of these positions have they role constitutionally defined i e the President, Secretary and Treasurer. To a certain extent the Deputy President too. Similarly also the function of the Chairman of the various Committees. In all these, the question is whether these people follow what has been enshrined in MHF Constitution?

The area i am looking at is the role of the 6 Vice Presidents. Their function is not clearly defined and a lot has to do with what they have been delegated to handle. The active of the lot is the Chairman of the Competitions Committee. His committee is suppose to have handled the organisation of the Malaysian Hockey League (MHL) and the Razak Cup. In a way they have attempted to re-engineer these tournaments and credit must be given to them for looking at things differently rather than in a stereo type fashion.

Another Vice President is responsible for the Medical Committee and he has been serving MHF for sometime. He is not new and seem to enjoy that position because it gives him accessibility to various hockey parent bodies in the international scenario. He was one of those who wanted to be a candidate for the Deputy President's post but was persuasively discouraged from contesting it last year. In MHF this person has done nothing much in the Medical Committee and indeed some wonder whether he has a committee and if so it would be interesting to look at the Committee's plans. Maybe it operates on an ad-hoc basis because of the traditional outlook of the role of the Medical Committee i e limited in nature. In a way this is sad as Sports Medicine is playing a significant role in modern day and could be under the ambit of the Medical Committee. Sometimes people do not like to venture into new areas.

Lately the Chairman of the Medical Committee has rubbed certain Ministry officials on the wrong side by his style of questioning their development programme. The story is that he has nothing much to do in MHF, therefore it allows him to be critical of others. The believe is that he wants to impress certain parties of his knowledge in hockey.

Then we have a corporate personality who is serving his 2nd term in MHF as Vice President. I believe he is Chairman of the Finance Committee and is responsible for raising funds for MHF. It surprises me that he has time for hockey despite his busy schedule, heavy work load and the responsibilities that he has to burden in the corporate sector. From various sources he is extremely supportive of sports particularly hockey. There is no doubt that with his presences MHF have had sufficiently large sponsorship for various of their events from the organisation he helms.

Another Vice President is a legally trained person who originates from Negri Sembilan. He is the Chairman of Special Projects, which according to many could be anything but at most times has nothing to do. Because of this they have now made him the Assistant Team Manager for the Project 2013 team. It would seem that he is one of those who is pushed "here and there" to fit into situations where they cannot find anybody.

Finally on the last 2 Vice Presidents, MHF have 1 each from the states of Sabah and Sarawak, who constitutionally must be elected to the post. They are there in name but do not appear for the meetings or functions and their contribution is as good as nil. Yet! for all purposes they are Vice Presidents.

The preceding paragraphs in a nutshell provide in summary of the role of the current Vice Presidents of MHF. The post of the Vice President is a key position and yet some of them do not have any major role to play. It seem to be a story of "to many chiefs and very few Indians" ( note that the Indians here denote the American Indians). So how can MHF function when most of them are some form of "chiefs" without an "army" to do the work. This is the saddest aspect in MHF i e only a few are passionately involved because of their love for hockey whereas many are there for various other reasons which is only best known to them.

3 comments:

darthvadai said...

Firstly there must be a fundamental understanding of the constitution.

When the constitution that was drafted majority of this team were the very people who endorsed it and today we are faced with a predicament that the constitution had failed and too much red tape and you have heads nodding in agreement.

All of a sudden you find that everyone seem to be picking on the constitution.

From the time the constitution was passed till present how did they cope with the rules or was it just cast aside as window dressing.

For the VP, we got 6? two automatics are given to East Malaysian based states. WHY? Previously it was 1 seat alternated between both the states.

We seem to be coming fat at the top.

In any organization and more importantly sport organization, roles, objectives, short term and long term targets are discussed mapped out and evaluated before setting them out to the states. We can pluck ideas out of the sky and put them in black and white and expect them to work. You can just have committee meetign just for the sake of having one and complete your quota.

We are part of the system and the system lacks a PLAN. A plan that must consist of tasks objective even if it mean we have to teach people like school children, that is in fact the only way we can recognize.

Make a plan, make it a simple on, one for domestic and one for overseas. Sync it...its not to hard.

Challenge the people in the TEAM to meet the plan or step aside for people who can. Get feedback more importantly set targets.

observer said...

After reading mtoday you will understand the hypocrisy in mhf when that guy was the president.The only reason there want to be in mhf is so that they can rub shoulders with the elite in the world.As for that doc fella you mentioned what would he be if not for hockey,otherwise i would have recommened that he go to the nearest tesco and in aisle 6 being the life section to buy a life.

Anonymous said...

If MHF doesn't change the constitution, there will be a great downfall.Most of the VP's good in giving ideas but cannot bring in the money. Most of the Committees are sleeping partners. No action. MHF and other sports association should hire professionals who have the passion to run the show. Now MHF has the GM but he cannot be looking into all the Committees activities. The Committees members are just happy holding the post but no work is done for the development of the sport.
1975 fan