Kit Siang: Jasa under Puad flopped, why use public funds to revive it?

 

The Special Affairs Department (Jasa) became a flop despite millions of ringgit spent on propaganda purposes, as evident in BN's ouster from power in 2018, DAP central committee member Lim Kit Siang said today.

"The question now is, why should Malaysian public monies be used by Jasa to manufacture and spread lies and falsehoods?" Lim asked in a statement.

He was responding to claims by Umno supreme council member and former Jasa director-general Mohd Puad Zarkashi, who claimed that DAP was "afraid" of the soon-to-be revived government agency.

Then prime minister Najib Abdul Razak appointed Puad as Jasa head in March 2015. However, Puad quit in a huff in April 2018 after he was not fielded as a BN candidate.

After it was revealed that the Perikatan Nasional government wants to revive Jasa with an RM85.5 million budget for 2021, Puad said the amount was eye-opening, since BN only allocated RM30 million for the agency for 2018.

Puad claimed that one of Jasa's duties at the time was to respond to DAP's "lies on social media".

For Lim, Puad was wrong to assert that DAP "feared" Jasa.

"Why should Puad's Jasa be feared when it was such a great flop - or Najib would still be the prime minister and would not be convicted of corruption, abuse of power and money-laundering," he said.

In contrast, Lim said the "hundreds of millions" used to fund "Umno cyber operations" to paint DAP as anti-Malay, anti-Islam, anti-royalty and communist were most successful after Jasa was disbanded.

Jasa had its roots in the Special Affairs Division

The defunct Jasa is a secretive government agency that had its roots in the 1960s when it was then called the Special Affairs Division (Cawangan Hal Ehwal Khas, Chek) under the government's Information Ministry, which has since been renamed as the Communications and Multimedia Ministry.

According to the 2019 list of government positions, Jasa had 229 full-time staff across the country before it was disbanded in January 2020.

However, Jasa was widely believed to have employed contract staff with a monthly allowance of RM900 to oversee 222 parliamentary and 576 state constituencies, bringing the overall salaried staff to slightly over 1,000.

In 2017, a gathering of 942 Jasa staff was held in Alor Gajah, Malacca, themed "Ke Arah Memenangi Majoriti 2/3 Pilihan Raya Umum (PRU) Ke-14" (Towards winning a two-thirds majority in the 14th general election).

At that time, Puad had revealed that the contract staff were renewed annually. He proposed that the contracts should last for at least two years and that contract staff who had served for more than 15 years be eligible for an RM300 monthly bonus. - Mkini