When the PM LHL said: “we cannot expect Ministers never to make mistakes or never to have mistakes happen on their watch in their ministries. It is not possible – this is a very big organisation and it is a very complicated world, and even with the best intent in the world, from time to time, things will go wrong.”…. This implicit means that anybody can screw up and it’s OK and you can continue business as usual.
This way of thinking is very different from what I knew of when I was in the government service in the 1960s when the then PM LKY told us in a meeting at the Victoria Hall that he expected all of us civil servants to be on the ball 24/7 to serve the people and he said if things get messed up, the Minister in my ministry, his head will roll. Do it right the first time was the imperative encapsulated in all of our thoughts in execution and any policies implemented must have the forward view of what’s best not only for the day but for the future of our nation.
Today, it is a very different world under PM LHL – that ministers and the civil service can muddle along by trial and error and it’s perfectly alright to bungle up.
Given that they are now so highly paid, ministers including, this thinking is totally unacceptable.
Little wonder we are on the way to decline. MBT messed up MOT and MND and he got away scot-free. WKS under his watch at MHA, had Mas Selamat escaped and the massive immigration problems that brought us to our knees. RL had the SMRT and public transport disaster and many more. These three Micky mouses, they all got off with impunity while the public suffer from their gross mismanagement.
The way things go today there will never be a time when a minister will be made accountable. All of them are busy counting their exorbitant salaries and it doesn’t matter to them if they will be voted in the next term or not because more than enough is made with their dizzy remunerations plus bonuses. There is absolutely no accountability.
Today MBT, WKS and RL though stripped of their minister posts are still MPs that you don’t hear a squeak from them in parliament.
However big an organisation is and however complicated the world is, there is no reason for their lacklustre performances especially so when they are drawing salaries many folds over that of their predecessors in the 1960s. With that kind of extraordinary remunerations, very much more are to be expected from the ministers and the civil service.
Looks like the root cause of all our issues lies with the laissez-faire management style of the PM. A very good indicator is the absence of a quorum at the parliament sitting on Monday 7th July, 2014 when two important bills were to be passed and NMP Eugene Tan had to point out to the Speaker of Parliament that there was no quorum to constitutionally pass bills. Even the Speaker of Parliament failed to take notice of an under twenty-five percent presence of the MPs.
It’s really pathetic that we have come to this state.
Old Civil Servant