Corruption-free Government Agencies, possible?
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Corruption-free Government Agencies, possible?
TEMASEK REVIEW
IntroductionThere has been a recent report on the audit lapses of four of our state agencies (MDA, MOE, MTI and Mindef) and I wondered if we are that squeaky clean after all.The Public Accounts Committee, which oversees the whole auditting processing, is also suprisingly convened by eight Members of Parliament causing eyebrows to raise as to how impartial they can be.
It is like asking your own siblings to go through your accounts when there is an audit check. It will definitely be better if such committee be staffed by auditors from professional auditting firms without any political self interest.There is obviously a thin line drawn between operational lapses and corruption - something that the government will seriously want to take a good look at to maintain our long-held proud clean record of a corruption-free public service.It is clear that operational lapses are less severe than corruption as the latter is carried out maliciously for personal financial gain whereas the former is more of a systemic institutional oversight.However, if operational lapses are not rectified over time, staff will be tempted to exploit such operational weaknesses for their own personal gain. We saw how the Chief Executives of National Kidney Foundation and Ren Ci Hospital were hauled to court for routinely fleecing the charitites that they ran for many years. I believed that this is merely the tip of the iceberg here.MDA – A Repeat OffenderOne of the four alleged ministries – MDA – chided for audit lapses last week was also suprisingly chastised just a year ago by the Attorney-General in a Straits Times’ report on 15 Jul 2009 for the same operational malpractices.Among its many lapses then included the failure to collect $9.89 million in revenue from investment in 46 firms. Contractual obligations were also not followed through. For example, it did not bring to task the underperformance of a sloppy contractor at the Institute of Technical Department (ITE).It looked as if MDA has not learned their mistake here as for the second straight year, they have committed the same mistake and probably were let off too leniently each time with just a warning.One also wonders what penalty will the government impose on the organisation if their mistake goes unheeded for another few more years. Will heads roll or do they continue to operate as if nothing has happened?Our government has taken pains to pay our government staff decently and sometimes to the point of over-paying them so that they will not resort to using illicit means to earn an extra income at their work places. This is to be commendable as a corruption-rife civil service will not do Singapore any good.Civil Service Bad ExperiencesI remembered working for a Deputy Director (DD) in a civil service many years ago who asked his staff to do personal things for him. The government scholar would ask his technical department staff to repair his home’s leaked pipe or his personal driver to pick up his daughter from school.Naturally, for the sake of their rice bowl, the staff unwillingly obliged. When I heard of such allegations, I was uncomfortable but couldn’t do anything about it.There wasn’t any whistle blowing practices in place then and in order to pin point your big boss up for malpractices, you need to gather those who had the evidences to stand on your side. I am sure that this would be a tall order as livelihood is at stake here.Fortunately, I heard CPIB later started an investigation into a staff’s allegation that the DD has abused his position at work. His assets were heard to be frozen for about six months during that period pending an investigation. I was relieved that at least someone had the guts to blow the whistle on him. Shamefully, I didn’t have enough guts to do so.As the DD was both arrogant and loud-mouthed, I was not surprised that someone decided to report on him as he was behaving like a tyrant at the work place. Staff were put down and humiliated during meetings and the turn-over rate was high. He was clearly an unpopular man.I also learned that though he could continue in his current position, his promotion to the next grade would not be possible. I thought that he was let off pretty leniently.Hai Sing Catholic PrincipalWe also knew of the recent infamous Hai Sing Catholic principal who hired his friend to a consultant position in the school. The principal was subsequently replaced and transferred out to the MOE headquarters.Likewise, someone in the school has reported on him and according to the newspaper reports, he was arrogant and ran the school like a tyrant. Maybe, MOE has allowed principals to have too much autonomy in the schools creating a virtual monster out of many – to the horror of school teachers.The civil service actually has an enviable system to stop possible corruption by requiring you to put up a proposal of three quotations before a certain amount can be dispensed for a pruchase.I remembered as a young purchasing officer working in the civil service, I have to call for a few quotations from private companies and wrote tedious detailed reports why I have chosen to purchase a particular product from that company. This procedure applied to any departmental purchase for an amount exceeding $500. My section head, departmental head and asst deputy director have to authorise before I could proceed with the purchase.I thought that the procedure was both troublesome and inefficient until I realised that it was a very good check system against any possible financial irregularities.Coming back to the Hai Sing Catholic principal’s case.I have heard from friends working in schools that it is common for principals to hire friends for short-termed positions such as a consultant or motivational speaker.It made sense as primarily, the principal knows the credentials of their friends and very often he does not have the luxury of time to allow him to write tedious reports on top of calling in quotations from the public. The whole process may have taken up to a month before the position can be filled and by then the event may be over.So, is the principal’s malpractice constituted as an operational lapse or an oversight here?For all we know, something may have change hand when he appointed his friend to that school’s position but I am speculating here. Again, this reiterated the fear that any operational lapse can be exploited for a personal gain.Self Help Groups and CDCsI have also worked in a self help group for a few months before and felt disturbed by the whole experience.Manpower issues were poorly handled and many earned salaries that blew my mind off. A university graduate could earn close to $4500 a month excluding bonuses after a few years of service and the superior in my section behaved like a friend to his staff.The IT guy who worked there also brought in a fish tank to his offce and he could be seen talking more to other office staff than working. The whole office environment looks like a family business but only this time round, they are using public funds.We were also warned not to publicise our pay for fear that the public will know about it and writes to the press to complaint which to me is a mockery to the whole transparency process.I believed that civil servants or even self help group staff need to be adequately compensated for the kind of work that they do but if they need to cover up their salary packages then something is wrong here. Are they guilty of over-compensating staff perhaps?The same salary package’s fear happened when I was working in the CDC two years ago - infamous for their hefty yearly bonuses because of the PB (performance bonus) factor. Some solid performers even received PB of almost six months without factoring in the official year-end bonuses yet!Many staff took back 5-figure bonuses during the year end.Back to the self help group that I worked in.Some of the self help group’s operating expenses also smelled of over indulgence. For example, we ran a bus publicity service throughout the island once a week and staff would attend to the public’s enquiries on job matching at selected HDB spots.Unfortunately, the bus routes selected were mostly in some remote HDB carparks that nobody knows and very often, we receive zero enquiries for job assistance wasting half a day of our time.I am ok with the scheme if it is beneficial but the public’s response was so lukewarm that we wasted precious resouces running such a white- elephant project weekly. I also heard that the bus scheme didn’t came cheaply. The community service project set the self help group back by $50,000 for an entire year of operation not counting in the man- hours involved.I remembered many of us volunteered for such weekly bus community outing as it was seen more like a half day off to tour Singapore housing estate than anything else. Fortunately, the bus project was called off after one year of public fund wastage.The self help group also suffered from one surprising dilemma – it has too much money and didn’t really know how to spend it.Meetings were specially held to encourage departments to use up all their projected funds as if not they will have to carry forward their excess fund to the next financial year thus creating a huge budget surplus. I was amazed at how perturbed management staff were at trying to use up all their excess funds available.It also goes to show how wealthy self help groups are and wonder if they can do more to give to the poor than our five CDCs have.ConclusionThe government needs to realise that the whole civil service is funded by tax payer’s money and they are accountable to the public. Any operational lapses need to be rectified early and if there is a serial defaultor like the MDA, heads must roll so that the public is assured of a serious commitment to provide tip-top public service. The same goes for our four self help groups.Written By: Gilbert Goh -
nothing new la.
police force in particular. past few years how many police office arrested for taking bribes?in stomp you can see police car hiding in mulitistory carpark taking a quick nap.
customs officer who openly challenge migrants workers with abusive languages which i saw myself. often challenging them to make complaint against them if they are not happy. these are the scums of the customs office.
i mean these could be norm in any countries. and i hope we singaporeans do not pin high hopes on our civil service coz they aint that good or professional.
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Uncle, where go corruption free one...the paid itself is already part of a corruption scam liao...alamak you older than me still dun understand meh.
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There is always corruption... just that whether it was legalised or not.
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a tax free super high pay is typically a corruption right off the face
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aunty nun
pls don't want put words into my mouth
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i thot i only kiss you on yr cheek..where got kiss yr mouth??
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Originally posted by angel7030:
i thot i only kiss you on yr cheek..where got kiss yr mouth??
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where got corruption?? no lah i dun see any at all......all the corruption in sg already legalised already....
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legal corruption mah...a new term in politics and laws
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spore no corruption, all swee swee one. Swee swee buay chao zwee.
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creative acct/window dressing
