1Malaysia: Waste of Civil Service Time, Effort and Public Expense

ARCHIVES 2009

By admin-s On May 26, 2009

Datuk Seri Rais Yatim has completely lost the plot of what he is supposed to be doing.

By Fahri Azzat (Loyarburok)

Neville Spykerman of the Malaysian Insider reports as follows:

The government is stepping up its efforts to sell 1Malaysia to a sceptical nation.

Senior officers from the ministry of information, communication, culture and arts were told today they were the “sellers”? of the concept.

Minister Datuk Seri Rais Yatim said it was up to them to drive home the message especially in Pakatan Rakyat (PR) states.

Like in advertising, he said the ministry needed to create a “desire” for 1Malaysia among the people.

This desire can be created if the quality of the product was good, he said.

If this is true, then Datuk Seri Rais Yatim has completely lost the plot of what he is supposed to be doing. If he wants to run a marketing campaign, quit and join a marketing and advertising agency. And try his luck there. But he is in charge of the Ministry of Information, Communications, and Culture, which is supposed to look after those aspects in our nation and people’s interests.

In his Ministry are people called civil servants. Marketing is not in their repertoire of skills because their job is not to sell anything to anyone. They are there to regulate, develop, anaylze, enforce the law and collecting information for public dissemination relating to those respective areas. And to waste all that and heaven forbid, retrain them to market, will be a grosser neglect if not abuse of public resources.

And furthermore, to do as the Minister proposes is also a waste of public resources, not to mention time. What do the rakyat get out of it? Nothing. He is quite clear about this:

The slogan is meant to portray a more inclusive Barisan Nasional (BN) and to win back the support of non-Malays in the wake of the March 8 political Tsunami last year.

“We should be the first as members of the ministry to understand.” said Rais, adding what they would present to the people would depend on what they understood.

He stressed the underlining message of 1Malaysia is a nation united would stand while divided it would fall.

So great, public funds are being used to fund BN political campaigns. It’s so common, I suppose he didn’t feel the need to hide it. Isn’t it great that all this public expenditure of money has absolutely nothing to do with the public. So at least we know whom the Minister is really trying to impress with this show of loyalty at our expense.