The Malaysia Institute of Chartered Secretaries & Administrators (Maicsa) has been very arrogant and adamant with its dealings of its members, students and lecturers to the extent that whatever information that supposed to be made available to them is often being curtailed.

Take for instance, the Corporate Financial Management paper for the final year of the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators (ICSA) course has for the past many years only beeen able to attain about a 10 percent passing rate consistently.

When the students and lecturers wished to obtain more information as to how the papers were marked and whether the papers were properly and adequately cross-checked and vetted by an independent authority/examiner, the answers to these questions were never made known.

The consistently and extremely low passing rate of around 10 percent year after year has never been given a satisfactory explanation by Maicsa.

With such an exceptionally low passing rate, every student, lecturer and business house feels a loss of hope.

This is grossly unacceptable as students, lecturers and corporations are very puzzled and annoyed as to why Maicsa keeps the marking process such a secret when by right they should be more transparent and open-minded.

There is no satisfactory answer whatsoever as to why there is such a low passing rate by Maicsa til now.

As a body which is supposed to be in the forefront of corporate governance, what Maicsa practises is just the opposite. This is very disappointing and warrants appropriate action by the ICSA to straighten things out in Maicsa.

As a result of its closed doors and arrogant attitude, many students and even colleges have ceased to study for, or conduct the ICSA course.

The situation is appalling and with no hope for a change in sight. Therefore, ICSA's intervention is absolutely necessary to help regain public confidence in the ICSA course rather than leaving it to deteriorate further.

If the situation is to worsen, many would expect a substantial drop in the number of students enrolling to study for the ICSA course.

This shall have serious consequences for the thousands of corporations in the country whereby many companies will not be able to hire qualified company secretaries as required by law as there will be just too few to go around.

As a result, the costs of company secretaries will be driven upwards and this shall cause hardship to many.

Besides, Maicsa is also facing recurring financial deficits and with its acute shortage of funds to operate adequately, this is sure to affect the standard and quality of the ICSA course.

In order to regain confidence from the public in ICSA, I suggest its urgent and direct intervention into Maicsa to institute a total revamp of its board to be overseen by ICSA London with its council members personally look into the grievances and problems of Maicsa especially with regards to the yearly and ever-failing Corporate Financial Management subject.

We all have lost hope and confidence in Maicsa and don't think it has the capacity and ability to turn things around. Alternatively, we look forward to a body to replace Maicsa in order to inject new breath and vibrancy for both ICSA and the work of company secretaries.