Chief Secretary to the Government Tan Sri Mohd Sidek bin Haji Hassan (tenth from right) and Datu Sudarsono Osman (seventh from right) with the 4-Quest members who triumphed in the Management Category.

Chief Secretary to the Government Tan Sri Mohd Sidek bin Haji Hassan (sixth from left) handing over the prize to Datu Sudarsono Osman (fifth from left).  With them are team members from Millennium Sabe who won first placing in the Technical Category.

Sarawak achieved a historic triple victory by winning the Anugerah Ketua Setiausaha Negara in both the technical and management categories for the first time during the 28^th national-level Civil Service Innovative and Creative Circle Convention held in Negeri Sembilan from 31 October to 2 November 2011.

The record feat was scored by two teams from the Land and Survey Department - Millennium Sabe in the Technical Category and 4-Quest in the Management Category. 

Millennium Sabe with its revolutionary creation called ‘My Smart Peg’ was the sole team to be awarded a five-star rating, beating 27 other teams from all over Malaysia with the highest accumulated marks of 81.01.

Millennium Sabe also added another feather to the cap by bagging the ‘Best Booth Award’ under the Technical Category.

Congratulating both teams on their victory, Director Datu Sudarsono Osman said the staff had worked hard to achieve such terrific results.

“Winning two awards at one time is definitely the cherry on the icing.  Both teams put up a splendid performance during the stiff competition,” he said.

He added that Sarawak was the only State represented by one Department in both categories of the Convention by virtue of the two teams being champion in their respective category at the State-level Innovative and Creative Circle Convention that was held in July earlier this year. 

Datu Sudarsono expressed hope that this achievement would motivate staff of the Department to continuously embrace the innovation culture to enhance the service-delivery of the Department.

“We will endeavour to focus on process innovations so that we can render fast and efficient services, friendly to the rakyat.”

Millennium Sabe team from the Survey Branch Headquarters led by Staff Surveyor Siti Romiza Romali conceptualised and produced a prototype smart peg in-house which is made from thermoplastic known as polypropylene. 

Compared to the belian peg that is currently used by surveyors for control and boundary marks, the smart peg is eco-friendly, durable and more importantly has a metal insert in-head that enables easier detection of the survey marks on the ground.   Usage of belian peg today is deemed as not viable due to the increasingly scarce supply of belian wood.  ‘My Smart Peg’ helps to conserve environment by saving about 700 belian trees that are cut down every year.

Meanwhile, the winning project of 4-Quest team from Land and Survey Miri Division led by Registrar Douglas Pungga had improvised the work process to retrieve outstanding premium from private developers.  Failure to settle land premium is one of the recurrent reasons that causes delay in the issuance of land title for housing and commercial projects, creating much frustration particularly among house buyers.

During the team’s trial implementation of the newly improvised work processes on 33 outstanding premium cases from 2005-2009, the Department collected a whooping RM3.2 million from the developers who had defaulted on their payment of premium.

This is the second win for Land and Survey Department at the national-level Innovative and Creative Circle Convention.  The Department had emerged as first runner-up back in 2009 through its one-day registration of land instruments mooted by the Sassoku team from Land and Survey’s Kuching Divisional Office.  This one-day registration of land instruments has since been adopted as a national benchmark for the other land offices throughout the country.