Hello all! I'm Keekee from Sarawak Campus. I have started my internship at Public Relations department under Miri City Council (MCC) since 1 August 2011 and I have to say I really enjoy my time there!
Due to the lack of public relations department in Miri, I have spent more than 3 months searching for a suitable placement to start my internship. It is a great luck of mine to have MCC kindly accepts me as their intern under the Public Relations department and has been very considerate in my appeal to start the attachment only in the afternoon of Monday as I still have a morning class in the morning every Monday.
Let me start by introduce MCC to you all before I start to share my experiences gained at MCC.
Miri City Council is established under the Local Authority Ordinance and started the operation since 1933 under the name as Miri Town Board and is renamed as Miri City Council at the year of 2005. MCC is committed to manage council's resources efficiently and deliver quality services to the people.
Logo of Miri City Council
Leading by the Mayor, the Miri team of Councillors has comprised Deputy Mayor and 25 Councillors. Apart from attending meetings to formulate Council's policies on its direction and operation, the councillors meet tge people regularly and have dialogues as well as give talks about council's projects and programmes, organize community services, explain Council's direction and policies. Suggestions, requests and feedback about Council's programmes and projects from the people are often take into consideration and action by the Council.
On my first day, I was given a tour at the Public Relations department by my supervisor, Mr Tay Boon Pang. I was introduced to the friendly employees in the department and also briefed on how the department functions. The PR department plays 4 major roles in MCC: managing complains from the public, conducting public relations activities, issue media releases and recording the meeting minutes of Councillors. Then, I was guided to a table which was specializing for me and Mr Tay gave some reading materials such as MCC's yearly reports and strategic plan to me in order to let me have a better understanding about MCC. I have learned about MCC's organisation structure and how each department functions by reading the reports.
My reading materials
Pelajar Praktikal stands for Practical Student while Seksyen Perhubungan Awam means Public Relations Department. These two phrases are wrote in Malay language as Malay is the national language of Malaysia.
My name tag
I have to admit that i feel really nervous when I first stepped into the department. Fortunately, things are not as bad as I expected. My supervisor and colleagues have been very friendly and helpful during my time at the department. Due to my timidness, I dare not to have a chit chat with my fellow colleagues but when I finally took the courage and talked with them to see if I can help them with anything, I actually found that they are quite fun and stress-free to work together with.
Additionally, I was surprise to see the standard operating procedure as the procedure has make sure that every complain or feedback from the public is being recorded and send to related department for further action. It has always been a negative perception for public that the government departments ignore complains and are slow in taking action. Yet I have see that MCC actually takes notice of every single complain seriously and has try their very best to serve the people in Miri. At the same time, due to the lack of manpower, it takes a longer time for the departments to take action for the complains and feedbacks. This has teaches me to see things from both side instead of just accusing others.
So I guess I will stop by now and update you guys more in my next post. See you! : D
Best regards,
Yiu Tuong Kee (Keekee)
Miri Campus
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