The Lembah Bertam and Ringlet tragedy in Cameron Highlands - mudslides and flooding killing migrants and destroying vast properties - has more dimensions to it than what is being discussed in the mainstream media today.

In all the fuss over the minister representing the constituency and having two of the same type of incidents occurring almost within a year, there has been no light cast on the inner workings of the Environment Ministry, to be more specific and direct, the senior civil servants.

G Palanivel is a first time minister, despite being a long-serving deputy minister in previous terms. He is not a minister from Umno, he is the president of the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC). While the title sounds grand, the idea of leading a largely disjointed organisation only for Indians in a crowded “We too are for Indians” field of parties is reliant on the super-powerful Umno to let him have a ministry, and Palanivel is no more than a token boss at the ministry.

Umno supreme council members are far more powerful, and even Umno division chiefs far more influential than him.

Then the question would be, why did a fragile leader of a minister under so much fire for a year fail to do enough to avert a repeat in Cameron Highlands?

This is why despite the obvious smoking gun, observers should look deeper and ask the role of the secretary-general at the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry. While he is a not a name mentioned much in the weeks from the incidents, he sits on the tender board. He also sits on the tender board of another interesting place, the Drainage and Irrigation Department.

The kind of irrigation and drainage where water, general waste, plantation refuse and silt are channelled properly - so that improper things like mudslides and floods do not happen.

For example, a Kulim-based firm, which has allegedly received more than RM500 million in DID and Environment Ministry contracts for the past couple of years. It is being whispered that many competitors’ tender submissions have unilaterally been disqualified by the secretary-general and the recipient of these filters have consistently been the Kulim-based form.

So that is the happy story of this firm, which coincides with the unhappy story for the many residents of Cameron Highlands who are busy restarting their lives because mudslides and floods were not mitigated correctly.

Questions have to be asked if any of the dealings with this firm have any relation to the failures and loss of lives in Lembah Bertam and Ringlets.