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Professionals wants their fees scale kept

Friday, 20 January 2006 07:06pm

©Malaysiakini (Used by permission)
By Beh Lih Yi

Nine local professional bodies have joined hands in calling for the scale of fees for their various professions to be maintained due to the phenomenon of 'consumers tending to shop around to get the cheapest fees'.

At joint press conference held at the Bar Council’s headquarters in Kuala Lumpur today, they said that fees scale needed to be retained in order to ensure the high standards of professional services rendered as well protect consumers.

“In a free market situation, it is often too tempting for consumers requiring professional services to seek out the cheapest, sidelining the issue of quality of service, in particular when such quality is not immediately or easily discernible.

“This shopping around or marketing for cheaper fees will lead to an unhealthy widespread undercutting of professional fees,” said the nine bodies in a joint memorandum released at the press conference.

“When fees are uneconomic and do not commensurate with the level of the services that ought to be provided, it is not uncommon for the quality of professional services render to be compromised,” the memorandum further stated.

They also said the abolishment of their scale of fees would not be appropriate they served as a guideline to prevent both overcharging and undercutting.

No complaints yet

The nine were the Consulting Engineers Association, the Valuer and Property Consultants in Private Practice Association, the Bar Council, the Board of Town Planners, the Institution of Engineers, the Institution of Surveyors, the Malaysian Institute of Architects, the Malaysian Institute of Planners and the Malaysian Medical Association.

Also present were representatives from two consumer bodies, the Federation of Malaysian Consumers Association (Fomca) and the National House Buyers Association.

Darshan Singh, who is Fomca’s complaints division manager, said the association has yet to receive complaints directly related to scale of fees.

“But we do receive complaints on the level of professional service provided. If you look at that point itself - we don’t ask them what’s were the fees charged - it could always link to what were the fees charged,” he said at the press conference.

Darshan said Malaysian consumers generally failed to understand that the quality of services provided were important. He stressed that to educate the consumers, making rules that such fees scale fee must be followed was significant.

Two sides of coin

Bar Council President Yeo Yang Poh said by not abiding by a scale of fees, a time would come when professional standards would be affected.

“When price becomes the pre-dominant factor, and almost the 100 percent factor, then you can get even simple rights being ignored and it’s just not cost effective anymore,” he said.

Asked how consumers’ benefits would be guaranteed by a fees scale, he replied: “There’s really no guarantee [...] It’s a matter of which environment is more conducive to have both sides of the coin in protecting the public and maintaining professional standards.”

Professional fees are fixed by a statutory board within each professional body. If any member breaches the scale, complaints can be lodged to relevant board and disciplinary action taken including suspension.