I have often observed that, when confronted with widespread criticism, a bureaucrat's knee-jerk response is to set up a committee, with the declared intension to study and investigate whatever problems people are bitching about. It is one way of appeasing the beast of public opinion, at least for a while.

Naturally, such a committee will take time, a lot of time. By definition, a committee is where secretaries will take minutes, and innumerable meetings will take countless long hours.

The committee will also encounter resistance. Those who are investigated will put up all sorts of smoke-screens, false leads, and mendacious tall tales. I learned about these tricks during those years sitting on the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee as the sole opposition representative.

(Once I asked an education officer why a tin of condensed milk was supplied to a school for RM12 when it could be bought for RM1.20 in any supermarket. His deadpan reply was that they overlooked a typing mistake that had placed the decimal point wrongly on the tender document.)

Rare are the odd committees that can escape the iron dictate of Parkinson's Law; they all tend to expand their work in order to fill the time available for it. The nature of any committee is to generate work, especially paper work.