“Kita pergi bukan main-main atau buat sight-seeing. Kita buat lawatan sambil belajar (We are going not for fun or to sight-see. We are going on a study tour).”
- President of a local council when asked about a trip undertaken on taxpayers’ money.
It was a time when the BN-Umno government could do no wrong. Money was spent on holidays and junkets without having to be accountable.
If there was any wrongdoing, they were often covered up and kept away from prying eyes. Hence, it remained a secret until Mohd Khir Toyo’s government was ousted in the 2008 general election.
Documents that provided evidence of the previous menteri besar's extravagance and excesses emerged.
Khir, his family, and other state officials, among others, spent almost RM1.6 million on two overseas trips, including a Paris and Orlando Disneyland tour.
The expenditure list included a 2004 visit to Disneyland Paris and a four-day transit stopover in Dubai.
He also led a rombongan (delegation) to the Netherlands and Austria to study how waterways in Selangor could be used as a means of transport to ease congestion on our roads.
His wife Zaharah Kecik and the wives of state assemblypersons travelled to Cambodia to “understand how poor people lived”.
‘Two hours of business, seven nights of pleasure’
In 2005, a public outcry resulted in a trip by Selangor’s Public Accounts Committee members to Egypt being aborted. The trip included watching belly dancers.
“Two hours of business, seven nights of pleasure” was how a newspaper described it to rebut then-Subang Jaya representative Lee Hwa Beng who described the trip as “100 percent educational”.
In 2006, I was at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport awaiting the arrival of passengers on Flight MH9042 from Mauritius. Among them was a delegation from the Selayang Municipal Council which included nine councillors, the president, the secretary and his wife, two officials and four businesspersons who had contracts with the council.
They returned from Mauritius after studying how public toilets are maintained and kept clean. I had then asked: “How did contractors become part of an official delegation? Don’t the rules require councillors to keep dealings with suppliers of goods and services at arm's length?”
One would have thought that the furore caused by these revelations would end such trips. Still, it did not stop a nine-member team from the Terengganu government, led by its then-menteri besar Ahmad Said, from leading a “research team” to Antarctica to study “climate change”.
A stopover in Chile afforded them enough time for R&R. However, the trip was not cheap: It cost taxpayers RM846,000.
In 2019, then-inspector-general of police Mohamad Fuzi Harun and 17 other senior police officers undertook a lavish trip to Turkey, sponsored by the Malaysia Totalisator Board, a regulatory body that oversees racing and betting activities.
Issue resurfaced
Last Friday, the issue of such lawatan sambil belajar surfaced again when the Anwar Ibrahim-led government announced that 68 government officials' planned trip to Berlin, Germany had been cancelled as the administration clamped down on excessive public spending.
Perhaps they may have succeeded if they had taken a hint from the Comedy Court’s Indi and Alan, who in jest identified ways to write a proposal for an overseas junket including golf.
What event or conference were they heading to? It is hard to guess. Over the next four weeks, it will host more than 50 conferences, ranging from health sciences to green energy and sports science to biotechnology.
Last year, Berlin hosted 70,535 business events - conventions, conferences, seminars, exhibitions, presentations, and related social events.
How much would it have cost? According to the Malaysian Airlines website, the trip (on business class, knowing that civil servants don’t fly on cattle class on official trips) and accommodation at a four-star hotel for four days/three nights would cost about RM30,000 each. This is just over RM2 million!
Yes, RM2 million was saved, but will it go for the right purpose or splurged like the RM10 million on our football team which is going nowhere. Money, most of the time, does not buy success.
However, there are even more significant issues related to this trip. How were the participants selected? Who approved the trip? How would the trip have benefitted the civil servants in exercising their duties?
The cancellation prevented adverse comments and bad publicity for the government, the ministry, and the civil servants, who had just received a pay rise.
The Madani government has a duty to tell us which ministry officers were supposed to be on this trip and the conference or seminar they would have attended.
After all, taxpayers’ money is involved. Since the government was elected on the premise of being accountable and transparent to the people, it must live up to its promises. - Mkini
R NADESWARAN is a veteran journalist who writes on bread-and-butter issues. Comments: citizen.nades22@gmail.com.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.
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