Risyawati Mohamed Ismail

Post-disaster housing reconstruction: Perspectives of the NGO and local authorities on delay issues

Post disaster reconstruction is complex, dynamic and chaotic in nature and as such represents many challenges because it is unlike normal construction. However, the time scale of reconstruction is shorter than the normal construction, but it often deals with uncertainties and the scale of the construction activities required is relatively high. After a disaster impacts a country, many governments, institutions and aid organizations cooperate and involved with the reconstruction process. This is seen as a tool for applying policies and programs designed to remedy the weakness in developmental policies, infrastructure and institutional arrangements. This paper reports a part of an on-going research on post-disaster housing reconstruction in Malaysia. An extensive literature review and pilot interviews were undertaken to establish the factors that contribute to the delay in post-disaster reconstruction project. Accordingly, this paper takes the perspective of recovery from non-government organization (NGO) a...

SIHAT: an assessment tool for Shariah–compliant hotel operations

Hotel customers are demanding better services, propelling the industry from standardised services, towards customised services. Evidence was seen in the form of increasing trend in the demand of this focused segment. Hoteliers take this opportunity to offer what is called Shariah compliant hotel due to its enormous economic gain. However the concept is still relatively new to many hoteliers with no established model of the Shariah compliance as guideline. Hence, we introduce SIHAT or Shariah Islamic Hotel Assessment Tool, a comprehensive model generated from an exploratory study of Shariah–compliant hotels in Malaysia. SIHAT is meant to serve as an audit tool, used in assessing Shariah compliance level. SIHAT has five main practices namely administration, common areas, bedroom, services and food and beverages, with 64 attributes. Our findings are useful as inputs of operation procedures for hoteliers that seek to attract Muslim travellers in Malaysia and globally.