Lack of Accountability in Government Servants... Why?

Decades ago, Malaysian government sectors were one of the best in this region. From time to time, the quality of government sectors declined terribly, immediately draw criticism from various groups of citizen especially NGOs. A state government in Malaysia knowing that Malaysian is lack of accountability in governance, it has introduced some populist measures and claimed to be the first to implement the CAT (competency, accountability, transparency) policy in the country to form a 'government for people'.

There are a lot of factors leads to the plunge of accountability among government servants. At once, Malaysia has best system and our government servants always committed to their responsibility. But now our government sectors full of corruption, misuse of power and mismanagement of the authorities and so on. Corruption rate in Malaysia mount to its worst performance ever which released by Transparency International shows that we lack of accountable government servants.

During 50s, 60s, and 70s, government sector’s servant most of them were Malaysian Indian. They worked hard to fulfill their responsibility to the people. Malaysian Indian very committed with their works during those days, the process of every works was very quick and on time. But what’s happening now? We can’t get our works complete fast and on time. We required waiting for hours for pay our bills and other official matters. Even at some of the time, the officials delay simple matters. Such difficulties that faced by people are standard incidents in their daily lives.

Another most fundamental issue that destroys accountability of government servant is corruption. The corrupted officers will make the things finish early just because they have received money from the people who corrupting them. So they often ignore ordinary people that never give any ‘incentive’ to them. Such behaviour spoil the governance system. By giving enough salaries to government servants, we can stop such irresponsible act.

Another factor which also effect the governance system and shows no accountability in government is lazinesses. In many occasion, I witness there are counters closed for customers even though at the peak hours. The customers stand for a long queue to wait but still the counters are not operating for them. Some government servant take their breakfast, and lunch in 'overtime', but I haven't seen any of them working overtime for the people. Peoples are facing difficulties to meet the officers solve their problems during this hours.

I hope government take efficient steps to improve accountability of government servants or should emulate Penang state government's CAT (competency, accountability, transparency) policy. If they seriously want the improvements, they should also bring more Malaysian Indian back to the government sectors in order to restore the peoples believe. More opportunity should given to the in this sector, so that the era of 50s, 60s and 70s which Malaysian government sector were praised by peoples can be reformed immediately.