President's Message - 31 July 2021
Speech by the Elected President for Tenure of 2021-2023 during AGM:
Good afternoon to all!
Thank you for giving me the chance to be the President of the third term from 2021-2023.
My first agenda is to present my notes of appreciation to Mr. Ding Sing Leong, our President, for the first and second term from 2016-2021. I have learnt a lot from his guidance and generous sharing from his vast experience. He has also given me the trust and freehand to carry out activities and events while I was the Secretary-General from 2016-2019 and Deputy President from 2019-2021. We have just elected Mr. Ding as our Honorary Life President during this AGM. We are grateful to retain him with us so that he can continue to share his thoughts along the way.
I would also like to thank the board of committee for the first and second terms, who mostly remain in the new board. Also, not forgetting that the Pro-tem committee has done an excellent job in overcoming various challenges faced when setting up the association. I want to thank Mr. Tiew Soon Shin and Ms. Joyce Ong, who has introduced me to the dental community that has later formed the Pro-tem committee. Lastly, I would like to thank all the members who have supported the association all these years.
I am now pleased to share with you our strategic plan moving forward for the association.
We had a retreat and meeting held at Penang back in 2019 for the upcoming 5-years strategic plan. During the 3-day-2-night’s stay in the hotel, we had brainstorming and soul-searching sessions concerning where will our association be heading for the next five years. But, unfortunately, due to some unforeseen circumstances followed by the pandemic, we could not share the finalized strategic plan in time.
Today, I am glad to share with you our strategic plan. First, our vision is to bring professionalism into our industry in Malaysia. Next, our mission is to ensure the benefits of modern, innovative technology and reliable dental material, devices and services are delivered effectively and ethically to provide and improve better oral health outcomes to the Malaysian community at a larger scale. We have added another objective to our last 7 objectives, total 8 now.
Briefly, refer to the slide, our first objective is to unite all members. Next, to assist and uphold the members' benefits and rights. Our next two objectives are to conduct and coordinate training, communicating and collaborating with relevant ministers along with various associations.
The next objective in mind is to organize conferences, trade exhibitions, and obtain CPD points' approval. The sixth objective is to provide and manage voluntary activities and charitable works. Representing and promoting Malaysia's dental industry regionally as well as internationally. Last and newly added objective number 8 is to assist our members to obtain funds and grants for their operations and expansion from financial institution or government.
As we were discussing the upcoming five-year strategic plan, we took some time to prepare a business canvas – a nutshell of a plan describing how an association intends to serve. I would like you to focus on the 2nd column on the slide, which states the key activities of our association. As listed, we carried out most activities during Mr. Ding's tenure, and we wish to continue all of these activities with the addition of activities that we may plan in the future.
The key activity that we will be focusing is Malaysia International Dental Show (MIDS). We are also looking into member fellowship, seminars related to the regulatory updates from Medical Device Authority (MDA), competency training from related government agencies and trade missions such as DenTech Shanghai exhibition and conferences, where our members are enjoying special privileges come with VIP passes that allow us to use their facilities such as VIP lounge and enjoy complimentary snack and lunch. It would be great if we are able to expand these privileges to Beijing and Guangzhou dental fairs.
Charity is one of our activities that we will be working on for those in need. Continue for the dental training. One more activity we will add on is the e-commerce. We are currently at the discussion stage, and we hope to kick start the project as soon as possible and implement it during my term.
We have formed various sub-committees classified as divisions to ensure that planned activities run ideally. Thus, for instance, the exhibition division will be handling MIDS, and the government liaison division will be managing government agencies, mainly the MDA. In addition, we have a few activities kept in mind that relates to the members' relation. We are aware that this is the most challenging part as the majority of the members are often tied up with their busy schedules. Therefore, we made MDIA seminar 1.0 up to 4.0 as a networking event too to foster the relationship among all the members.
Next, our student liaisons division is to build relationships with dental students. As for the association, we can recommence in building our relationship with other dental associations including medical associations. Not forgetting the education and training division. Moving forward, we may add another youth committee that will be your company's successor and the new generation to be involved in our association.
In summary, we will continue to focus on what matters to members and urge members to bring up issues faced to the association for a discussion, either through committees or writing directly to the board of committee. Every issue brought up will be recorded in the meeting minutes for discussion and follow up by action. We may face difficulties if the members do not voice out in the system but rather remain as conversation in other medium.
At the same time, we will continue to execute our strategic plan. Our past board of committee have built a good foundation for us to continue. We are also looking to further increase our membership number for our association. The main reason we changed our association’s name from dental dealer to dental industry is to expand the scope of the dental industry from B2B to B2C that includes the dental lab on the business aspect, which is different from a dental technician or dental technologist.
Lastly, we are here to continue enhancing our relationship with all the stakeholders in the dental industry, government oral health programs, dental associations, and not forgetting our government supporting agencies like SIRIM, MITI, MIDA, etc.
Desmond Chong Yoong Fatt
President
Malaysia Dental Industry Association (MDIA)
31 July 2021