11 July 2018
It is startling to hear Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamed say that if all those suspected of bribery in the civil service were terminated, the government may be crippled. You can imagine the extent of corruption in the Malaysian civil service. This happens when the head is corrupt, he cannot prevent those down the line of his command to be free from corruption. He said that the public service personnel are paid in par or only slightly lower than their counterparts in the private sector. Despite this corruption has become endemic.
The head of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) said that the agency would continue to emphasise on cleaning up public sector corruption.
Head of the Malaysian Council of Eminent Persons, Daim Zainuddin said that there are a number of mini-1MDBs in the federal and state level institutions.
The government has introduced Integrity Units in several ministries. The role of the Integrity Unit is to ensure that each ministry and department conducts its own internal checks on compliance with the financial and administrative procedures on spending its budgetary allocations, particularly on the procurement of supplies and services.
The officials in the public service are required to declare their assets. The Integrity units can compare the declared assets to identify those who amass wealth disproportionate to their declared income.
Transparency International Malaysia said that Malaysia lost nearly RM46.9bil in 2017 alone due to the corruption within the public sector. It also said that the corruption level within Malaysia’s private sector was not any better.
