A Doctor in The House: A Memoir of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (55 page)

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] The Unit Tindakan Khas (UTK) or Special Action Unit is the Royal Malaysian Police’s second special forces. This unit carries out SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) duties and undercover missions.
 

[
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] Tan Sri Sanusi Junid was a Supreme Council member who went on to become UMNO Secretary- General and then Vice-President. He was President of the International Islamic University from 2001 until 2008.
 

I was well aware that the public was not very happy with the services provided by the Federal and state governments at the time I became Prime Minister. The local authorities generally failed to provide quality service and to look after the areas they were directly responsible for. Of course, the public was never—and will never be—completely satisfied with what the Government does. Improvement is measured by comparison to the situation immediately before, and usually even after changes are made, the carping criticisms begin again. Therefore, there must be continuous effort to improve services and utilities.

Malaysian towns and cities were generally not very presentable and only inadequate attempts were made to keep them clean, to beautify them, and to have proper landscaping. Public utilities did not function well either. The Civil Service personnel were often curt and unfriendly, and many projects were not carried out properly and on time. I spent the early months of my premiership thinking about this problem. I had been in the private sector, even though I was actually only managing pineapple canneries and a tin-can plant. But what I learnt there was invaluable: unless proper detailed instructions and practical training are given, work will not be carried out according to plan and quality and efficiency will be compromised.

When instructions for a given task were issued, I wondered whether government officers and other staff really understood what they had to do. Should the construction of a house or a hotel be proposed, for example, what would be the correct procedures to follow? What would each officer have to do to enable approval to be given for the hotel to be built and operated?

Upon investigation I found that the procedures were murky—not deliberately so, but because they were not organised. The officers concerned were not fully knowledgeable about what they had to look for in the applications they had to approve. A natural succession of events would then follow: if an officer found something wrong with the application or was uncertain how to proceed, he would simply put it in his Keep In View tray—and they all seemed to have big KIV trays. The applicant, meanwhile, would not be informed. Not wanting to annoy the officer, the applicant would wait for a considerable length of time before he dared to make any enquiries. Only then would he be told what the mistake was.

He would then correct the mistake in all the six copies he had submitted and return them to the department. Another officer was likely to find another mistake and would again set the application aside, and the whole rigmarole would repeat itself. It explained why at times it took two or more years for a building approval permit to be issued. Applications were also frequently lost, causing more delays.

There was very little construction taking place in Kuala Lumpur when I took over and this was simply due to bureaucratic delays and inefficiency. In 1981, the tallest buildings were the Federal Hotel and Merlin Hotel. None of the three or four then existing “skyscrapers” was more than 20 storeys high.

I decided to introduce a few innovations to speed up Government work and render it more productive. The first was for each department to produce a Manual of Procedures to enable every officer to know what steps to follow for each task at hand. The manuals were to include workflow charts for easy reference. Such systems and processes are important to ensure that no necessary steps are left out. It reminded me of the checklist that airplane pilots go through before takeoff, and which I myself used when I learnt to fly. Airplanes are very unforgiving—if you do not carry out the right actions in the right sequence, you may lose your life.

Based on this sound practice, I thought that if a checklist was provided then the administrative officers would not overlook or omit any of the steps. The applicant should also have such a checklist so that both parties could keep track of the process.

To ensure each officer knew his own role and his job for a particular task, he was to be provided with a desk file. This would tell him what to look for, what to check and approve or reject. He would also know from the workflow chart whom he was supposed to receive papers from, and to whom he should forward them after his section of the procedure was completed.

Needless to say, if there were grounds for disapproval, he would have to inform the applicant after he had checked everything that was within his area of responsibility. This needed to be done after going through the whole application and identifying all the errors. Where possible, all the other officers involved should check to see all that was wrong. Then the applicant should be informed of their decisions and asked to correct all the defects and deficiencies.

I had several discussions with the Chief Secretary and he was persuaded to adopt my suggestions. I believe the manuals, workflow charts and desk files were prepared by each department. Whether it was because of this or not, I don’t know, but the fact is that the cities and towns of Malaysia began to sprout innumerable buildings, skyscrapers and large housing projects—creating the impression of rapid growth and prosperity. All other infrastructure projects including expressways, water supply facilities, ports and airports were also constructed far more quickly than before.

I could not use technical language in conveying the processes, because I did not have time to study the art and science of administration in books written by experts. Many of the innovations I introduced were the result of my observations and of turning things over in my head.

For instance, when I realised that Cabinet decisions were not being carried out properly, I suspected that the officers did not really understand what the decisions meant. As a rule, Cabinet decisions were conveyed to them through the minutes of Cabinet meetings, which, for obvious reasons, could not contain all the details of the discussions. Frequently, only the decisions were recorded and passed on to the officers. They were then expected to know the objectives of the Cabinet and to figure out, with no guidance, how to implement them.

Unfortunately, the decisions often lent themselves to several interpretations. Sometimes the officers disagreed with the Cabinet decision, not having heard the supporting arguments and why other possible proposals had been rejected. They could even end up implementing what the Cabinet had rejected.

I once had the idea of building a tourist attraction near Menara KL, or KL Tower, that would resemble Rome’s famous Spanish Steps. I thought we could have steps leading down from the tower that would be lined with kiosks that sold souvenirs and snacks. The Public Works Department immediately responded by sending a team to study the Steps. But they could not find the Spanish Steps...because they were sent to Spain.

To avoid such incidents, I made it a requirement for Ministers to hold a post-Cabinet meeting with their staff later that same day. Ministers would then be able to clearly explain the Cabinet’s decisions to the officers, and could answer and clarify any doubts so that civil servants would carry out what the Cabinet had decided, with a forgivable margin of inaccuracy. Along the way the officers could find that certain things simply could not be implemented. They were given some leeway to modify the decision, but they were not empowered to change or reverse the decisions completely.

Bureaucratic procedures are necessary. But if officers are simply given a free hand to do what they think should be done, then the administration would be chaotic. They will do what suits them best, which may or may not be what the task itself was about, or what the Government or the people wanted as a whole. That is human nature. Were it all to be left to the discretion of the bureaucrats, people would never be certain what to expect, and in the face of uncertainty, corruption becomes ever more common. Corruption aside, bureaucrats like to follow and uphold bureaucratic procedures, often, it would seem, for its own sake. Unfortunately, bureaucratic procedures tend to expand, often in order to cope with various possibilities of misinterpretation and to ensure that procedures are duly followed. To avoid such error and confusion, the administration tends to add new conditions and procedures. The number of procedural hurdles that an applicant must cross continually increases. In many cases the approvals take the form of licences which have to be issued by certain departments, authorised by certain officers. Quite naturally, the issuing authority becomes powerful, and abnormally so.

There are laws against corruption and the Anti-Corruption Agency (now the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission) investigates and takes action. But in the fight against corruption the best method is to have a checklist of the requirements to be fulfilled and to determine the time needed to check and approve or disapprove each application.

To set up a hotel for example, used to require more than 200 different approvals, permits and licences and each took considerable time to be issued. There was also the idea that one should not make a decision until another officer has made his decision, and even if this is not as prevalent today, decisions are still not made as quickly as they should be. An officer only needs to be concerned with his own responsibilities. If the conditions are met, then he should give the approval, irrespective of the decisions of other officers. Since numerous copies of the application are required, each officer can work on his own copy. After each officer has scrutinised his copy and recorded his decisions, the most senior officer can check the entire application and inform the applicant as to whether he has been successful, or whether he needs to make corrections or changes.

There is no mystery to reducing bureaucratic procedures, but attempts at doing this invariably meet with resistance from those who stand to lose their authority. We tried to set up one-stop centres, but they did not work because senior officers would not or could not be present. They would send junior officers who invariably said that they could not make decisions until they met with their seniors. It would take ages for this meeting to take place, and even then the senior officer would usually not make an immediate decision.

Very often, it is corruption that causes the bureaucratic system to break down. I realised very early on that it would not be easy to act against corrupt officers. Even if they could be taken to court, the case may not stick. In 1981, soon after I was made Prime Minister, I issued a strong statement saying that I would take action against corrupt officers. Following this, a number of officers decided to take optional retirement. The statement obviously had a salutary effect and I believe there were fewer blatant attempts to extort money from people who did business with the Government.

One issue that arose frequently during my term was the increasing level of corruption within society as a whole. It has always existed, of course, but in Malaysia it is not as institutionalised as in some countries, nor is it an ingrained part of our administrative culture. The civil service and staff know that corruption is a crime and are careful not to indulge in it, at least not openly.

Monitoring was crucial to ensure that work was carried out properly, without money illicitly changing hands. The original idea about the role and responsibilities of the Cabinet was that it should confine itself to decision-making based on the papers prepared by the civil servants in the Ministry. But where possible, I required Ministers and senior civil servants to oversee the work themselves. They had to visit worksites and offices and check on progress. If too many projects were going on at the same time, reports accompanied by photographs would be sufficient. I myself required such reports to be provided to me at regular intervals. Every now and then, I would visit worksites and meet the supervisors and engineers. Following this I would inform the Cabinet and give them my comments. It helped to keep the Ministers and other officials on their toes.

After a decade as Prime Minister I found that Cabinet decisions were still not being properly implemented. I had asked my Ministers to oversee the implementation of our decisions but, as I did not make it an absolute requirement, many Ministers left matters to their officers.

This was poor management. Officers were handicapped in many ways—they had difficulty gauging how much they could modify Cabinet decisions to suit the situation at hand. If they wanted to make reports to the Cabinet about the difficulties they faced, their only avenue was through the Minister or Cabinet papers. Not being able to present matters in person compromised the accuracy of the picture and in the end, the Cabinet decisions remained a dead letter.

Because of this, in the early 1990s it was decided that Cabinet Ministers were obliged to be hands-on and oversee the implementation of Cabinet decisions themselves. The advantage was that they had more authority and could modify somewhat the decisions of the Cabinet to make their implementation possible, and if necessary, they could report directly to the Cabinet and seek new directions. Officers may not have liked this because it amounted to interference in their work, and it may have seemed to them that their authority was being undermined. It was up to the Ministers to be judicious and apt in the handling of relations with their staff.

One obvious example of the importance of being directly involved was that of Port Klang, the principal port of Malaysia. During the colonial era, the British developed a port in Selangor which they named Port Swettenham, after one of their High Commissioners. There was already a port in Penang and of course there was Singapore, a full British colony which also served as the principal naval base of Britain in Southeast Asia.