The Great Mamak Legacy: Graft Culture
Fighting a losing battle against graft — Tan Poh Kheng
I once read a book that said that even though man is the centre of the universe, because his heart is unable to control his greed and desire, humanity’s destiny has been changed.
People who commit crimes for money and countries that go to war to show their power and authority not only destroy themselves because of greed, but also cause the loss of life, and lead to human tragedy.
In history, the people who come to ruin because of one ill-considered action are too numerous to cite; and those who are tarnished due to their personal desire for power are as many as the carps in the river.
The number of government officials who embezzle because of greed is also not small.
I do not know if the recent spate of arrests and charging with fraud of government officials involved in corruption by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) is due to its new commissioner, or is due to the fact that the MACC has finally decided to turn over a new leaf and wants to clean up its record in history.
The Sin Chew Daily carried the reports on the former director of the Penang Immigration Department being charged because his personal net worth did not match his income, and that of the Land and Mines Department former deputy director for alleged misappropriation of public funds. The two cases made very compelling reading indeed.
SEGREGATION
SEGREGATION
That’s right.
Cows are racist.
The degree of the intensity and the depth of the impact of the destruction brought about by the corruption of civil servants cannot be imagined by ordinary people.
The Immigration Department is the responsible for the nation’s security at all its entry and exit points, but it is said to be among the top 10 most corrupted government departments.
It is simply unbelievable that an immigration officer can amass a personal net worth of nearly RM1 million.
Just at the end of last year, a senior immigration official was also discovered to have accumulated millions in cash and real estate within just 10 years.
The Immigration Department controls immigration and affairs of foreign workers. When senior immigration officials can be bribed so easily, does it not mean that illegal foreign workers or immigrants can easily bribe their way through Customs clearance to freely enter our country?
Immigration officials are the national security gatekeepers. If they received bribes, our national image would be hurt, and our people would be brought to shame.
We believe that many similar covert behaviours of contamination exist in the various units of government agencies, and those exposed and are being prosecuted are just the tip of the iceberg.
Whether the MACC can start rebuilding its image again depends on whether it is able to scoop out more polluted souls from this iceberg.
If the abuses by the corrupted civil servants are not removed, then the so-called government transformation plan may also be affected.
Some people think that we should emulate Singapore and learn from its scheme of using high salaries to keep the civil servants from corruption.
Unfortunately, our public servants have had one pay increase after another, and yet the cases of corruption are still occurring continuously.
This is simply because we are not learning from the Singapore judicial system, and are not severely punishing the corrupt public servants. I am afraid that we will have to work much harder to achieve “zero corruption”. — mysinchew.com
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