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Jake Van Der Kamp

THERE IS SOMETHING oddly missing in all the storm of talk about how and why the chairman of the Kowloon-Canton Railway Corp, Michael Tien Puk-sun, came to resign over the weekend.

We have had full coverage of Mr Tien's remarks on resigning, full coverage of comments by management and employees of the KCRC and plenty of speculation about what the sole shareholder, our government, will now do to replace Mr Tien.

But we have yet to hear so much as a peep about the affair from the company's management board. Mr Tien did not even go to the board to present his resignation. He went to Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen. It is almost as if this railway operates without a board of directors.

You may be excused for thinking that this is, in fact, true and it may be one reason that the  railway company so constantly finds itself embroiled in political turmoil. Let us take a closer look at these directors:

Michael Tien, chairman, appointed 2001. Career occupation: Garment retailer. Previous railway experience: None.

Samuel Lai Man-hay, executive director, appointed 2004. Career occupation: Finance director. Previous railway experience: Long-standing KCRC employee.

Vincent Lo Wing-sang, board member, appointed 1999. Career occupation: Lawyer. Previous railway experience: None.

Frederick Ma  Si-hang, ex officio as Secretary for Financial Services, appointed 2002. Career occupation: Canadian bank analyst. Previous railway experience: None.

Sarah Liao Sau-tung, ex officio as Transport Secretary, appointed 2002. Career occupation: Hospital waste manager. Previous railway experience: None.

Wan Man-yee, appointed 2002. Career occupation: Surveyor. Previous railway experience: None.

Patrick  Paul, appointed 2002. Career occupation: Accountant. Previous railway experience: None.

Abraham Shek Lai-him, appointed 2004. Career occupation: Legislator and property company director. Previous railway experience: None.

Richard Wong Yue-chim, appointed 2004. Career occupation: Economics professor. Previous railway experience: None.

Ng Leung-sing, appointed 2004. Career occupation: Banker. Previous railway experience: None.

And there you have it, one railway man, but on the finance rather than the operating side, and nine others, most very recently appointed, who  possibly could not tell a railway wheel from a steering wheel.

They are, in other words, typical government appointees, people who are deemed qualified because they sit on other government committees, plenty of them, which obviously leaves them a great deal of time to deliberate KCRC matters, and who are on their way to bauhinia awards for public service.

The railway board has one other problem. In recent years it made itself a reputation as the leakiest boat in all of Hong Kong. Let it privately deliberate any course of action and the next day the news would be in all the papers. Things may have changed with the new appointees,  but confidence betrayed is not easily restored and it is my guess that senior management is still a little wary of being frank with directors. Thus these people are not only in the dark to start with but likely still kept there.

And to ask a board chairman in this environment to be a non-executive chairman is not only to ask him to be a non-executive but to be a non-chairman. It is tantamount to making a one-man board of the one man with any railway experience, Samuel Lai. The other directors become rubber stampers. They may deny it but they have not much scope to be anything else.

I am not going to say that Mr Tien was blameless in the fracas with management and employees, which led to his resignation. I would not know anyway. Anyone with experience of office politics knows  that you can rarely if ever get to the bottom of personality disputes. But I will say for him that he was brought in by government to provide some direction to a railway company that had the appearance of not knowing quite where it was headed and, whether or not he was the right man for the job, the only way he could do it was a hands-on way. I think he may indeed have been  overzealous in requiring that almost instant reports of  operating problems be made to government officials and, by extension, to the media.

It probably had the effect of blowing routine difficulties out of proportion and undeservedly saddling the  company with a name for poor maintenance.

My immediate concern here, however, is the weakness of the  board. Whatever Mr Tien may himself have done to bring on his troubles, I think he was let down by his directors. We have too many of the wrong sort of people on this board and the fault lies with our government's procedures for naming people to such boards.

jake.vanderkamp@scmp.com



Chairman Tien derailed by wrong people on the KCRC board