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Might as well hire a consultant to be PM
Published:  Nov 14, 2013 10:03 AM
Updated: 4:50 AM

YOURSAY ‘The amount of money spent could easily hire a ‘freelance government' to manage Malaysia, and it would probably do a better job.'

MP: Gov't spent RM7.2bil on private consultants

your say, Yoursay ACR: The civil service has bloated to 1.5 million employees with increments and bonuses given every year, high-salaried Jusa (super salary scale) officials in employment, Performance and Management Delivery Unit (Pemandu) and what not, which pays CEO salaries and yet RM7.2 billion was spent on private consultants in just five years.

And the nerve of Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak to ask the rakyat, who are paying taxes to fund this profligate government, to tighten their belts.

Did the National Audit Department look into the expenses paid for consultants and whether they were justified? If not, why not?

Swipenter: RM7.2 billions in five years - 2009 to 2013. That is no chicken feed. Name these private consultant firms and who owns them?

This is a huge sum to spend on consultation fees whereas the Umno Baru-dominated government cannot even find the funds to replace old, ageing and leaking water pipes wasting two trillion litres of treated water.

Headhunter: Most of the money spent are for those useless fanciful public relations (PR) works for the PM and BN. Billions of our money down the drain.

Imagine how many subsidised houses for the poor and middle-income Malaysians can be built with RM7.2 billion.

Onyourtoes: This massive spending on consultants occurred during the period when the civil service (including those in Pemandu), the government-linked companies (GLCs) and statutory bodies have continued to expand with many of the positions upgraded to stratosphere level.

The civil service used to formulate and write policies for the government. The original New Economic Policy (NEP) was formulated and written by civil servants. MAS, Petronas, and MISC Bhd were initiated and set up by the civil servants.

Now you tell me, what does civil service do? Seriously, this is not me being a sour grape. I just want to know what civil servants do nowadays. They can't think, they can't formulate, they can't write and they can't implement and enforce too.

But they are good in upgrading posts, amass more perks and have more ‘lawatan sambil belajar' (study trips).

Louis: For a small country, the number of civil servants is disproportionately large. And out of this large number, the government still cannot find people with the necessary talents to do the jobs? That means all these while the government is employing duds.

Quigonbond: BN is just doing the practical thing. They need the votes, so they need to keep unemployment low. And to do that, the civil service becomes the employer of the last resort, absorbing unemployable local graduates from local universities.

The quality of civil service has been steadily declining over the decades - people who only do things not because they thought it is the most sensible, responsible or reasonable thing to do, but because they "menurut" (following) some stupid "perintah" (order) from their political leaders, who are also intellectually lacking.

So how else to get things done but to waste substantial money on consultants, and potentially getting another round of kickbacks from these consultants too?

It's a vicious cycle of self-created problems that should never have started if only they kept politics out of the education system and have Malaysians work based on merit.

The likes of Malay rights group Perkasa should foot the bill for these consultants for harping on Malay supremacy and dumbing down the civil service.

Adsertor: This is an average of RM1.8 billion per annum. It would have been more productive to use this money to train and upgrade our civil service.

CiViC: And I am sure this is just the tip of the iceberg. The amount of money spent could easily hire a "freelance government" to manage Malaysia, and it would probably do a better job.

Anonymous #02382443: That is "working smart". Why dirty your hands when you can get consultants to do the job and get the blame when project fail, such as the case of the Kuala Terengganu stadium .

KPNG: So what is purpose of glossy consultant reports when they are not used, not read, or read but not understood, or understand but not implemented correctly. To make things worse it might even be a one-year job by the consultants, then cut and paste and reproduced for subsequent years.

SomebodyElse: This is so ridiculous. What is the point getting an consultant to assist you in ruling the country? Might as well get the consultant to be our PM.

Gulagula: Too much dependancy on private consultants shows that those who run the country are hopelessly incompetent. The sad thing is that they think that they are doing great. So tragic.

Sirach: Someone should come up with an table showing, amongst others, the identity of the consultants, the nature of the assignments, how much they were paid, what they recommended and whether any of the recommendations were bore fruit or were even implemented.


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