Now that our home minister has openly admitted there is really a crime problem in our country, I hope that he can come out with a long term plan in reducing the crime rates.

However, not trying to be negative, in this country there have been just too many ad hoc "ops" in general to tackle many problems (traffic problems, education problems, etc...), that would never yield any long term solutions, including reducing crime rates.

For example, some time back there were some "ops" that placed police officers at the street corners of many housing estates to curb crimes.

No doubt that the police presence during that time did effectively reduce the crime rates temporarily. But now that the "ops" are over, the burglars are back in droves again terrorising the public.

All these short term, ad hoc, and half cooked solutions merely touch the surface without seriously looking at the core of the problems, and ultimately fail to provide effective solutions.

It is again one of those quick fix, feel good ploys, that has been used once too often to show that our government does in fact care about the citizens by taking such actions.

Unfortunately, at the end of the day when the dust settles, we are back to square one again.

I can foresee that is the case with our up and coming crime fighting efforts by the home ministry.

Eventually when it fails, our home minister will just probably shrug and said they had done the best that they could.

It is very sad that in this high-tech age, where information is readily available through internet, our government so often would just hide behind closed doors and come up with some home cooked plans that often yield disastrous results.

There are actually countless success stories around the world that we can emulate.

The greatest example is probably New York City.

During the 80's, New York City had one of the highest crime rates in the United States.

However, after Mayor Rudy Giuliani took over, by hiring experts and applying the "broken window" theory, coupled with "zero tolerance" in the police force, they managed to turn New York City around.

The crime rate remains down after so many years. Now it is one of the safest cities in the United States.

We can do likewise here. Find out what is our "broken window", hire expert help and shed that tidak apa (apathetic) attitude by our police force, and find a long term solution.

There are many other examples of success.

Our neighboring country Singapore is one. Contrary to certain reports that surfaced recently, Singapore is definitely the safest country in South East Asia, not us.

I am sure our well informed Home Ministry is aware of that.

Please don't waste time with another short term "ops" that to most of the citizens is another way of image management, that looks good on paper but never actually works.

What we want is a long term solution.

Only then the government will free the citizens of the fear that they are facing now, feel protected, and able to walk down any street without checking their backs all the time.