Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi today took one of his first initiatives in line with his pledge to fight graft by setting up a special task force to look into ways of reducing red tape and bureaucracy involving government departments.

At a press conference after chairing his first cabinet meeting as premier, Abdullah spoke at length about the measures that the government is considering in order to reduce opportunities for the incidence of bribery.

He said he has asked the chief secretary to the government to chair a task force to consider how to restructure district offices and local government departments, so as to make them more efficient and helpful to the public.

"Besides being a regulator, more importantly, the government must be an enabler. These measures would contribute to raising effectiveness of preventive measures to combat corruption. We hope to achieve zero corruption," he said, without stipulating a deadline.

Abdullah said another plan is to impose a time limit for authorities to approve permits on any application so as to increase transparency and efficiency.

"For instance if an application has been made and there is no response in two weeks, perhaps it can be taken that the application has been accepted. But we will have to study this further to see how and where we can implement this," he said.

Malaysia Inc to stay

Abdullah said he had also proposed the setting up of an Institute for Public Ethics to support his earlier proposal for a National Integrity Plan.

He said the idea of creating the institute is to bring together players in the private and public sectors so that they are able to understand their respective roles and be mutually supportive of one another in bringing about national development.

"The Malaysia Inc policy remains, so both sectors must be mutually supportive and be mutually complementary," he said.

"The objective is to promote good governance, accountability, transparency, efficiency, provide good training and opportunities for discussion. We hope that these measures will lead to an improvement in their attitude and motivation towards providing quality services."

Questioned about a report in Parliament last month on the high number of corruption convictions involving personnel in the Home Ministry over the past four years, Abdullah conceded that there were problems but said the government has been trying to address the issue.

"I won't hide facts and sweep things under the carpet. We have been fighting it very hard. I believe if we have not been working hard enough, the percentage might even be higher than what we are seeing today," he said.

In the months leading up to the leadership transition, Abdullah had made several strong speeches critical of the level of corruption in the country, particularly in the civil service. He has since made the fight against graft the main priority of his administration.

Transparency International has followed up on this by stating that Abdullah should take action within 100 days , in order to separate rhetoric from results.