The response by Minister of Finance (II) Nor Mohamed Yakcop that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is based on 'a request basis' sends conflicting messages to public-listed companies (PLCs) and to all other private limited companies at large.

In the first place, the proposal in Budget 2008 made CSR disclosures by PLCs mandatory. However, will Nor Yakcop's statement that 'racial composition happens to be categorised under CSR [...] it is nothing more than just (a request) to supply data' be reassuring to the corporate world?

More importantly, to suggest that staff racial composition restructuring would be appropriate so that corporations can balance their staff leave applications during festive seasons is quite mind- boggling. Does the Nor Yakcop mean to say that people can manage multimillion or billion dollar groups of companies, go global but cannot manage their staff vacation leave for festive seasons?

In multicultural countries like the US and the UK, where giant conglomerates like Microsoft or HSBC are headquartered, staff have no problems taking a long annual leave, sometimes up to four weeks in a row. These multinational companies have invested in Malaysia and their local employees too certainly do not encounter difficulties when their colleagues take leave during festive seasons.

Even in regional autonomous administrations like Hong Kong or homogenous countries like Korea or Japan where employees are known to slog long hours, they still have the time to take summer vacations or celebrate their major festivals in a big way. Yet these firms have been able to penetrate the world markets and create an international branding. Esprit, Samsung and Toyota can