Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein's assertion that the crime index is ‘not important’ has rendered questionable the government’s supposed success in reducing crime, Petaling Jaya Utara MP Tony Pua said today.

Pua said the minister was effectively saying that the Government Transformation Programme (GTP) report on the National Key Results Area of crime fighting comprises fraudulent data.

"(This also) proves that the minister is a fraud himself, by making use of crime statistics that are 'not important' and worse, manipulated to bluff Malaysians that the crime situation has improved tremendously under the 'transformation' leadership of (premier) Najib Abdul Razak," he added.

P NONE ua was referring to comments by Hishammuddin ( left ) last Sunday in brushing off a claim by crime watchdog MyWatch that crime statistics are being massaged to show an improved situation.

"On the one hand, the entire BN government has based its entire achievement and 'success' in fighting crime on the statistics,” Pua noted in a statement today.

"On the other hand, when statistics manipulation was discovered, the home minister is saying that these very same figures are not important.”

'Index shifted to non-index crime'

According to the 2011 GTP Annual Report, street crimes had been reduced by 39.7 percent while overall crime had been reduced by 11.1 percent.

MyWatch had alleged that serious crimes, such as kidnapping, extortion and causing grievous injury, were classified as non-index crime in an effort to lower the overall crime index .

NONE Among the allegations is that overall vehicle thefts from July to September last year had risen by 3.5 percent compared to the same period in 2011, but had gone unnoticed due to its classification as non-index crime.

'The government, as at this point of time, only publishes high-level 'index crime' statistics while refusing steadfastly to provide 'non-index crime' data," Pua said.

He pointed out that, from 2007-2011, index crime had indeed fallen by 24.7 percent, from 209,572 cases to 157,891 cases.

"However, this was achieved at the expense of the unpublished non-index crime, which increased from 42,752 to 72,106 or a massive 68.7 percent over the same period," Pua added.