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The managing director/CEO of
Northport (Malaysia) Bhd, Datuk Basheer Hassan
Abdul Kader was on Sunday (3 December 2006)
selected as the CILT Achiever of the Year Award
of the beating off several contenders nominated
for the award organized by the Chartered
Institute of Transport & Logistics (CILT)
(Malaysia National Section).
The selection of award, by an independent
five-member panel, headed by the
Secretary-General of the Ministry of Transport,
was made on specific set of criteria which
included contributions of the candidate to
specific national objectives, quality of
leadership, achieving specific corporate
objective/s and length of direct involvement in
the transport and logistics industry.
The recipient of the Award last year was the
Chief Executive Officer of AirAsia Bhd, Datuk
Tony Fernandes.
Basheer, an economics and law graduate, has been
associated with the development of the transport
and logistics industry in his 30-year working
life, including a long stint with Kontena
Nasional before he was seconded to work on
Malaysia’s first port privatization.
Working alongside P&O Australia on the
privatization of Port Klang container terminal
in 1986 gave Basheer a deep insight not only
into port operations and management but also
gained intimate knowledge in negotiations on
fundamental issues of privatization with the
public sector.
Following the successful award of the port
privatization, Basheer joined the P&O management
team that was tasked to operate and manage the
country first privatized port, then known as
Kelang Container Terminal (KCT), now known as
Northport.
In his acceptance speech, Basheer said he had
been a witness to these vast and tremendous
changes over the 3 decades of growth and
development of this industry.
“My only thoughts here, as I stand before you is
what else is in store by way of further changes
for this industry. Can we weather them as we
did, he posed.
Basheer said there are forces beyond that are
precipitating the structural changes.
“The functionalities of the industry have
changed dramatically and we are no longer
talking about a segmented industry.
“We may walk different paths, but regardless of
the modal form that we belong to, we have to
look at moving up the value chain in our quest
for survival and remain relevant in this
industry. This is required more of us as a
world-ranking importer/exporter nation whose
lifeline is trade,” said Basheer at the CILT
(Malaysia National Section) annual dinner held
in Kuala Lumpur Sunday. |
