The Forum was held in PJ Civic Auditorium on 09/01/2010 with distinguished speakers like Tan Sri Ramon Navaratnam, Dato Ambiga Sreenevasan and Datuk Zaid Ibrahim. It was heartening to hear some of them pouring their hearts out regarding the scourge of corruption besieging our Nation. I particularly concur with Ambiga on what she spoke in the Forum (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYmBkhx6F3w) and there is no lesser truth to it. You can rave and rant and dissent but you can only run but not hide.
It takes two hands to clap
Another speaker Tan Sri Navaratnam particularly caught my attention when he stressed that in corruption “it takes two hands to clap”. I think he is referring here to low level corruption (because high level corruption do not needs any hands to clap as it involves multi million or billion Ringgit transactions which slithered through unseen and uncanny hands in the form of commissions or kickbacks, contracts, patronage, leakages and all sorts of crafty and shady deals).
Coming back to the issue of “clapping hands”, I must agree and disagree on it. Insofar as the eyes can meet there is little to deny but under the scheming Malaysian government officers who has made a living out of it for so long and along the way has learn the intricacies and become sophisticated.
The problems which Tan Sri Navaratnam fails to see or refuses to see (because of his position in the MACC advisory council) is that In an advance corrupted country like Malaysia the other party is always willing to put out their hands for you to clap. Unlike Singapore, Hong Kong or Australia and any lesser corrupted countries try clapping their hands. Instead you will immediately get another slap of a more serious summon.
Why corruption is rampant here is because the Government is corrupted all the way from top to bottom and being prevalent for decades this became a norm and those in control will resist taking any serious action for fear reprisal or a similar judgment on themselves.
Coming to the gist of two hands clapping, I am sure Tan Sri Navaratnam is aware of the vast opportunities or avenues created by some high level bureaucrats for them to be corrupted or resist corruption. After tasting the delicious fruits for so many years, the bureaucrats are in no hurry to put a brake to it but instead produce more ambiguous and discretionary policies and extend more red tapes, for reasons everybody knows. Worst still half hearted preventive measures or a little “sandiwara” here and there makes corruption mutate and become more potent and elusive. ” Under table” money was the norm previously, but now it has now to go in a full circle to involve a third party collaborator and the stakes are higher as what is happening in DBKL, modus operandi explained in this bog. For information, walk into the DBKL office and you can see many of their officers playing computer games and yet it take ages for any approval.
In addition to the discretionary powers because of many grey areas
Other pertinent issues that give opportunity for corruption are intentional loopholes created to offer another opportunity for corruption. There are so many glaring examples, common ones are:
(i) applications where the duration and approvals are left to the discretion of the officers and no clear guidelines and time frame. Hence resulting in bribery to jump queue and suspicious approval
(ii) intentionally make life difficult for the applicants in terms of queuing time by placing the number of officers not proportionate to the crowd
(iii) murky and confusing application forms. Hence all this will need the services of touts who works hands in gloves with the officers to take advantage of the circumstances.
(iv) phone calls are never attended to ( and if even manage to get thru, there will be no help as the officers are always away on meetings (in actual fact either they are coming late or leaving early because of running some private errands and or dropping or picking up their children to or from school.
(v) absence of email facilities or no reply is cynical system to make things difficult or the need to run to them offering an opportunity to grease their palms. Sad to say, most of the time the government officers conducting their business are pathetically slow. Time is money and employers will instead employ runners who in turn will be at their mercy.
(vi) from my observations on the Immigration website even simple information like the list of all the government approved Maid Agencies are not there, hence unfairly depriving the employers of any knowledge of dealing with the wrong agencies. Invariably this gives the illegal agencies opportunities to operate without any control and free from impunity and appear and disappear as and when they like. Most problems arising from the intake of foreign maids are derived from these illegal. To my mind, this information is intentionally left out because illegal are forced to pay to get things done and they pay big. They have no other option. Anyway these illegal agencies has no qualms in not only faking documents but has also inside help to fake. That is why the illegal immigrant’s problem will never be eradicated as they are providing the corrupted enforcement officers a good source of income.
It is widely known that small to medium size companies are finding it hard to deal with government officers as they will look for ways and means to find fault. A telling example is an application wrongly turned down and was told to see an officer by the receptionist. However the moment she knows that application was for a company she immediately told that the officer is away for a meeting and nobody can help but only to come back to Putra Jaya tomorrow. Knowing that she is deliberately making things difficult my friend outfoxed her by asking his friend to help by seeing another receptionist to request to meet the same officer which obviously was in. As you can see many fall victims as they really knows how to make life difficult for you, especially is you are running a small business.
Every businessman knows that it is suicide if you dare cross any of the officers and any complaints will only results in more difficulties and as had said before the whole system is corrupted from head to toe and there lies a nest of syndicated conspirators. As an individual they tend to be lax or maybe more careful because they know it is not very lucrative as it’s a one time deal. But for Companies whom they know will have to return to them again, they know the representatives will not dare to complain and the weak will resort to bribing to get things done. This group will ultimately become close to them and that’s how they get them entangled into corruption. Except for some strong hearted and principled people who do not mind encountering the difficulties and are somewhat smart enough to outfox them (sometimes), the rest will ultimately fall prey.
There are many glaring instances that in spite of them knowing the loopholes, nothing is done. Examples are the renewal of calling visas which under the present system can be renewed without the presence of the passport holder, of course with a price. This can be prevented by introducing a simple mandatory thumbprint of the applicant and why is this not done. The other is the highly controversial VOA. Once the foreigner is inside the country many will have their visa lapse, as can be seen by the missing 39,000 Chennai Indians. Being deemed illegal the police will have a field day collecting tithes from them. Every month openly they are going round on a motor bike to collect their dues. Isn’t that good enough to explain why we are having this big headache and the innocent people are the sole losers as many are killed or maimed by these unscrupulous foreign thieves or murderers. These are only a few examples and of course there are many more which can fill pages.
So Tan Sri, your adage of “taking 2 hands to clap” is only partially true. In our beloved Malaysia even if you have no hands you will still have to clap. They are put there to make life difficult for you. That is the truth in it. Perhaps you can do something about it by getting the government to do a total overhaul of the whole system and get those naughty boys out by early retirement. That is seemingly a very tall order.
