QUICK TAKE: It was a common practice in the 1960s and 1970s for various government ministries to give due attention to all complaints and criticisms that involved the work of their ministries.
The federal Information Department had a special section that monitored daily all the news, especially from the vernacular press, and these were passed on to the various ministries for corrective actions. And in most cases, actions were done and government was always kept alert to the needs of the people.
There was no Internet then and grouses from the people were made through the print media. The whole government machinery was geared towards complying with the needs of the common men.
There was also the special section in the Information Department whose work was to monitor complaints and grouses of the people. The officials in this section worked in the rural areas and tried to gather all legitimate complaints and channelled them to the departments concerned for necessary actions.
Every government official had been made to be aware that his or her job was to implement government policies to the satisfaction of the people. They were to carry out their duties efficiently by following the procedures and rules as stated in the General Orders and other government circulars.
But this situation was marred by the government of the day in 1980s when rules were set aside in order to cut the red tape. This was an erroneous perception on the part of the government as once rules and regulations were broken, there was no way to check whether work and financial procedures were done properly.
This was the start of the era whereby scandals reared their ugly heads.
Money was simply spent without due care and procedure. No in-depth analysis was carried out and thus projects were mooted based on mere perceptions that these projects would propel the country to become modern and developed.
This trend of side-lining all grouses of the people continues till today.
The prime minister would and will not answer all the questions posed by concerned citizens. Every single national issue was explained only to the select few behind closed doors.
The agencies involved in producing rational and acceptable reasons for such demeanours happening did not come out with anything clear and precise as to what the actual situation is.
Questions concerning the GLC, 1MDB and the RM2.6 billion-donation for example, were passed by as if these were not important to national interest and welfare.
It is most unethical on the part of the government to just whisper the so-called explanations about these matters to only party members in a closed door meeting.
The issues involve the whole country and such explanations should have been done in Parliament so that the whole country would know the actual and true situations of these sought after clarifications.
But the PM and the government kept a golden silence. It is indeed baffling and uncalled for on the part of the government to just ignore the interest of the people.
Government’s credibility is at stake and yet there is complete silence and most deafening to the people about this unbelievable attitude.-The Ant Daily
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