APALISOK
While his friends, Malaysia’s youth delegation and organizers of the International Co-operative Alliance Asia-Pacific Co-operative Youth Summit, were enjoying local culture and countryside adventure that went with the intensive immersion program in Lamac, Pinamungahan, Cebu, Wan Mohd Hasif Wan Mohamat Ali, secretary of Koperasi Profesional Putrajaya Berhad aka Koprojaya, was stranded in Kuala Lumpur for three hours on Friday (August 17, 2018).
His flight was scheduled to leave for Manila at 12 p.m but he and more than a hundred passengers were told their plane cannot land in the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila for some reason. They were then bused to a hotel where they stayed overnight and waited to fly out of KL the following day, (Saturday) at 8 in the morning.
They arrived in KL airport very early only to be told their flight was moved to 4 p.m. This sent all passengers in dismay since many were trying to catch some business meetings in Manila, while a group was all set to attend the wedding of an important person. Some tourists had children in tow so one can just imagine how stressful the situation was to all the passengers.
As we all know, NAIA was in chaos after a B737 of Xiamen Air slid out of control on a wet runway due to bad weather before 12 midnight last Friday. Hundreds of flights were cancelled and thousands of passengers were stranded. The impact was felt in other airports across Asia Pacific and people around the world were cursing NAIA people even if the mishap involved a Chinese airline caught in a force majeure situation.
In any case, Wan Mohd managed to get himself booked to the next flight to Manila passing through Kota Kinabalu which arrived in Manila at 4PM on Saturday. However, passengers had to wait for hours and hours to disembark because there was no parking slot as some 216 planes were on queue waiting for their turn.
While waiting to be offloaded, Wan Mohd tried to keep his spirits up by looking at the pictures uploaded by friends on social media and in between chatted with fellow passengers. In the process, he added 22 new friends to his network. After more than 8 hours they were allowed to disembark late Saturday evening (August 18).
From Manila, Wan Mohd boarded the next flight to Cebu which fortunately promptly arrived at around 1 a.m. a Sunday. There was another challenge because there was no available vehicle and airport assistants were drained by the bedlam resulting from the NAIA chaos. At around this time, the partygoers in Lamac were trying to get some sleep while waiting for call time at 5 a.m. for the road trip that will take them to Oslob for the whale shark watching adventure.
Being stranded for more than 48 hours is killing and had Wan Mohd Hasif decided to go back to Kuala Lumpur the Youth Summit organizers would have understood perfectly but not this young gentleman who, in between waiting between delays in two airports in Malaysia and one in Manila,
managed to keep his spirits up by simply opening his laptop and watching fellow youth co-operators learning and having fun in Lamac.
Tired and drained by the very long trip, Wan Mohd thought of going directly to the hotel in Cebu City where all the delegates were billeted but he decided against it “in the spirit of co-operativism”. He finally arrived in Lamac past 3 a.m. as his peers were getting ready for the trip to Oslob.
I had the privilege of interviewing Mr. Wan Mohd Hasif in the sidelines of the ICA AP Cooperative Youth Summit last Monday (August 21) in the Rajah Park Hotel after he delivered a paper on the business of Koprojaya, a co-op composed of young government workers from Malaysia’s various government agencies.
What makes Koprojaya unique is that while Malaysian civil servants are banned by law to engage in business, the restriction does not apply if the enterprise is run by a co-operative. Koprojaya is a prestigious organization composed of some 1,400 young civil servants and is a model for social enterprises.
Wan Mohd urge the youth to be patient because they’re facing “unprecedented challenges” like, lack of resources, lack of connection or networking and inexperience and so patience, in his own words, “is the only way.” He also added that the youth needed to “strategize” in order to succeed.
I’m not sure if Wan Mohd was looking at a prepared script when he talked about the virtue of patience but because he tackled it in the context of how he survived the 48-hour delay and never let it ruin his cooperative spirit, I think the ICA AP Youth sector has found a great role model.