PUTRAJAYA: Rules are needed to regulate human behavior and the way of conducting business.
With new technology and trends, some rules need to be reviewed to stay relevant in current times.
As the public becomes more interested in getting their views heard and demand for greater transparency, there is a need for a platform to air their views.
Malaysia Productivity Corporation (MPC) Associate (GRP policy and technical expert) Datuk Ooi Say Chuan said consultation was needed to get a feel on what is happening on the ground prior to preparing a policy.
It is a process in the Regulatory Impact Assessment in line with the National Good Regulatory Practice (GRP) Policy (2014).
For this matter, public consultation was held usually by having meetings, town hall sessions or roundtable discussions.
“One of the improvements is by having the Unified Public Consultation (UPC) portal which become available this year,” he said.
In the UPC portal, Malaysians living locally and abroad, can register their name and participate in any regulation reviews or make suggestions on issues that are affecting them.
He said the rule-makers, which are the ministries or its agencies are required to furnish the consultation documents for the public to better understand the purpose of review, the issue surrounding the regulations, and analysis of the regulations, among others.
Ooi said the views need to be sought as the public and the industry players will be mostly affected by rules enforced by the government.
He said consumers’ behaviour and businesses have evolved, such as more of them are using courier service for online shopping and travelers often check-in at Airbnb facilities during holidays.
“This was not the trend before and there were only limited companies or home owners that provide the service,” he said.
He said another example is on the usage of private ambulances to address the needs for patient transfer to and fro from medical facilities, usage of drones and on the ban of smoking at public eateries.
Ooi said besides meeting them face-to-face, the ministries and its agencies have also taken the initiative to get public input on regulatory review by putting it on their respective websites.
However, he said there was no standardised format and web users need to spend their time browsing the websites to locate the survey.
Ooi said UPC made it easier for the public to give their feedback as all regulations will be placed under one portal and the public can check on the update.
“There will be a time frame for them to participate,” he said.
This would also give ease for stakeholders who could not travel far to participate in the meetings for public consultation.
“Besides that, the UPC provides more transparency with the consultation document as the stakeholders are better prepared to give their views.
At times, they were called for meeting but was not been given enough information before hand, thus could not provide sufficient feedback for the regulatory review,” he said.
Meanwhile, MPC deputy director-general Datuk Abdul Latif Abu Seman said UPC will make stakeholder engagement in the rule making process more uniformed, effective and efficient.
“We worked together with the World Bank to develop UPC last year,” he said.
“It was vital as it also promotes accountability, enhance predictability, reduces risk of policy failure, encourages public commitment to the policy and allow stakeholders views to be heard and considered,” he said.
He said the regulatory coordinator for the agencies and ministries will benefit from having UPC as a new mechanism for them to gather and analyse the feedback.
“We do not want to have rules that frustrate, but instead to facilitate the growth of businesses and trades in the country,” he said adding that it will attract multinational companies to recruit workers from the country as well as getting more investors here.
He said to comply with the principles of GRP, public consultation is one of the elements when introducing new or reviewing existing policies, particularly in relations to regulations that relate to or impact business, investment and trade.
Abdul Latif said under Thrust 4 of the Malaysia Productivity Blueprint (Forging a Robust Ecosystem) MPC was given a responsibility to accelerate the efforts to enhance whole government’s approach towards addressing regulatory constraints.
He hoped that UPC will also encourage more people to provide ideas instead of going to other inappropriate platform such as to social media to air their grouses.
Abdul Latif said this will ensure that the right people will look into their suggestions in a more structured and systematic manner.
He said after the pre launch of UPC yesterday (March 27) there were about 200 registered new users and they target to have 1,000 new registrations per month.
“We aim to have about 10,000 registered users this year. An official launch of this system will be held in April,” he said.
For more information, please visit