By Hamisah Hamid and Ooi Tee Ching
A LEADERSHIP tussle has broken out at the Malaysian Furniture Industry Council (MFIC),
with separate camps claiming legitimate control of the industry body.
On one side is Richard Lee Kean See, who was elected MFIC president at the MFIC Governing Committee (GC) meeting on June 14 this year.
At a GC meeting on October 10, Lee was removed from his post and Datuk Yong Seng Yeow was appointed in his place, along with a new line-up of MFIC office bearers.
Lee, who was not present at the meeting that removed him, claims the new line-up is invalid as the GC meeting was unlawfully held.
Speaking at a news conference in Kuala Lumpur yesterday, he said the October meeting was called by nine GC members and not the president.
He said according to MFIC’s Constitution, only the president himself, or upon request from not less than a third of GC members, can a meeting be called.
“The minutes of the 4th GC meeting marked MFIC secretary-general Jamaludin Murad and me as ‘absent with apologies’, but we did not attend the meeting because we questioned its legality. We were absent because we protested the meeting and we did not give any apology,” Lee said.
He said 18 out of 23 members of the GC attended the meeting on October 10, which also passed a resolution to cancel an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) called earlier by Lee.
The EGM was supposed to be held on November 1, but on that day, the MFIC secretariat office was closed.
“There is no provision in MFIC Constitution allowing a GC to annul or cancel the EGM which was validly called by the president,” Lee added.
He plans to call for a fresh GC meeting soon to settle the matter, but no date has been set yet.
On whether the tussle would affect the country’s furniture industry, Lee said: “Unity is definitely important. If we are united, we will have strong support from members and we can move forward in addressing issues faced by the industry.”
MFIC currently has direct membership of over 500 Malaysian furniture manufacturers and exporters.
Meanwhile, a proposed merger between MFIC and the Malaysian Furniture Entrepreneur Association (MFEA), another industry body, was supposed to conclude by December 2012 but remains unresolved until now.
“The faster MFEA merges with MFIC, the faster we can work for common objectives beneficial to all furniture manufacturers, big or small,” MFEA president Cha Hoo Peng said when contacted yesterday.
The current boardroom struggle in MFIC has no impact on the industry,” said Malacca-based DPS Resources Bhd executive chairman and managing director Datuk Peter Sow Chin Chuan.
He said the real crisis furniture manufacturers have been facing in the last two years is profit margin erosion because of higher oil prices and rubberwood shortage.
