Kiosk Issue

Edited at 8:34pm

بسم الله الرحمان الرحيم

In the name of Allah

the Most Gracious and the Most Merciful

Assalamualaikum wbt.

We have been receiving / have received many complaints regarding the Kiosk at CF Brother. We are all (MRC and residents alike) aware that the problem has been occurring since last year, 2010, or perhaps longer than that. 

Since our first meeting on January 5 2011, we had decided to entrust this issue under Entrepreneur Bureau. during our recent general meeting on January 26 2011, they (Entrepreneur Bureau) had reported some progress on the matter.

According to Bro Said Imaddudeen, the current Kiosk owner, Pak cik Zaidi (Uncle Zaidi) did not go through a proper channel when he first started his business at CF Brother. "A proper channel" here means that he did not seek the related UIA authorities who are in charge of approving shopkeepers who wish to do business in our beloved UIA Kuantan campus.

For your information, in UIA there are 3 types of authoritative departments; Food and Beverages, Facilities and Services. In UIA Kuantan campus however, only Food and Beverages and Facilities departments are fully operational which are under the management of IIUM Properties (IP). The situation becomes complicated as issues like tenures for Kiosk are handled by Services department.

We understand that the residents wish for a change in owner of the Kiosk. We even received reports that some students are waiting to grab that chance, besides other shopkeepers in Kuantan. So, in your minds there must be this question; if there are people just waiting to take this lucrative chance, why then there has not been anyone new to replace the current owner?

The crucial key to our problem is as we have explained above. The real problem is because Pak cik Zaidi came in not through a proper channel, so there was no proper documentation. Hence, MRC Talhah and the Mahallah Talhah Management Team (Ustaz Ali, fellows, office staffs) has no way of properly replacing the current owner.

On the issue of the shopkeeper's unfriendliness;

She is actually Pak cik Zaidi's daughter. She was employed by her father to run the Kiosk, but she was not very willing at the time. When their business started to suffer some losses, her father reduced her wages and cut the internet line. All the factors combined, you can understand how it affected her social skills with customers.

Despite the problem, Entrepreneur Bureau has tried to come up with other solutions. One of them was the suggestion that MRC Talhah take over the ownership, with the committee members taking turns to look after the shop.

However, after much debating and re-thinking, we decided to drop that plan as it is not very realistic. Furthermore, it is not an easy task; managing a shop requires skill and vast knowledge (accounting, stock keeping etc), as well as time commitment. In the end, we decided to later open the tender to anyone who is interested, which will be handled by Bro Imaddudeen.

Whatever the fate of the Kiosk ownership will be, the real problem still needs to be tackled first - how to officially replace the current owner. 

Therefore, the resolution that was achieved was (proposed by Bro Imaddudeen); MRC will file a complaint letter regarding the overall sad and bad state of the current Kiosk and send it to the Principal, Ustaz Ali for approval. If all goes well, the Kiosk will then be under Ustaz Ali's authority and he will have the final say regarding future ownership or any other related issues of the Kiosk.

That's all the progress we have for the moment. We will keep our residents informed on the next update, insya-Allah.

Assalamualaikum wbt.