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NST Leader: What's up, civil service?

Malaysia wants to be among the top 25 nations in Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index within the next 10 years.

From 67 to top 25 is one leap of an ambition. But can the civil service help the government deliver on its ambition? We can't say "yes" with all sincerity given the frequent arrests of civil servants of all ranks.

Take Tuesday night, the most recent of arrests of civil servants. On that night, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Agency (MACC) arrested two civil servants in Sarawak, one of them a department director.

The pair were involved in receiving bribes worth millions of ringgit. Late last month, six health officers were arrested in Negri Sembilan in a case involving the remains of non-Muslim at a government hospital there. Even the dead are not spared.

August, too, had its contribution of arrests. Now how's that for frequency, ranks and places? This has been going on in every nook and corner of the country for so long that we can come to only one conclusion: there is something seriously wrong in the public service's governance system.

The corrupt and the corruptible are not only able to enter the civil service easily, but are able to stay there and "earn" their millions. No rocket science is needed to know that corruption blooms where anti-corruption measures are weak and oversight is absent.

In May, the MACC shocked the nation with its disclosure that its reports of misconduct against officers were being ignored by heads of department (HODs). Here is the bombshell: some of the reports were forwarded to the HODs as long as 12 years.

The HODs had no fear of the MACC, and so they let 553 reports gather dust. Did they have their bosses' approval to ignore them? The civil service can have all the guidelines it wants, but without robust oversight, they are just paper tigers.

This universe of civil service governance must be disturbed by a service-wide transformation. We detect an absence of a zero-tolerance policy for corruption. Zero tolerance on paper isn't good enough.

The civil service must act on it like China does. Corrupt officers are removed immediately, with due process, of course. Zero tolerance isn't going to happen if corrupt officers aren't held accountable.

If things can go unnoticed for 12 years, then there is a gaping hole in the civil service's governance of its officers. The corrupt must be held accountable and those tasked with oversight of the corrupt must be held accountable, too. No matter the rank.

Consider the Tuesday case again. The main suspect in the case is alleged to have received kickbacks from 2018 to 2021 from a company for helping it secure two projects worth RM44.4 million. How did he manage to get away this long? What were his boss and the boss's boss doing all this while? Three years of slumber is no oversight in any sense of the word.

Mr prime minister, we must say this. Your ambition to put Malaysia in the top league of CPI in the next 10 years is praiseworthy, but the civil service isn't helping. Your ambitious ambition needs a civil service of the incorruptible kind. If the chief secretary starts getting rid of the corrupt from today, Malaysia may just make it by 2033.

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