By Khairie Hisyam
Year after year the Auditor-General exposes the mismanagement and downright wasteful spending habits of the government; but nothing concrete ever follows after the public uproar. Tiger offers his expertise and awesomeness for the benefit of the nation with its J1MAT or Jimat 1Malaysia Agency for Transformation for the uninitiated.
Tiger read report after report on the Auditor-General’s findings in the 2012 audit with a mix of horror, outrage and amusement. Such tremendous wastage and worse, some are even so blatant that Tiger was driven to tears, so hard was it laughing.
That is, until Tiger remembered that Tiger’s own hard-earned tax money is also being wasted; at which point the amusement turned to feral fury.
For one, the Health Ministry spent RM320,000 on two Facebook pages and a Twitter account. Out of curiosity Tiger looked up Eficaz Media, that was paid RM199,068 for one Facebook page which, by the way, Tiger feels is exorbitant as Tiger would be willing to do it for a modest salary on the ministry’s payroll.
Arriving at their website Tiger found that this dodgy company boasts a horde of big-name clients including various government agencies but not much else — much of the website’s content sections are filled with nonsense words and sentences which one usually gets when starting a new blog, to be removed as one inserts real content. And the language standards are disappointing. Something stinks really bad here, not unlike the stench from the Sewerage Services Department’s ‘sick’ project.
And the list goes on and on and on. Tiger is so depressed that he wants to eat some comfort food. Hopefully Tiger’s stash of dried Sambar deer jerky is still good, unlike the year-long expired food kept by the Royal Malaysian Navy.
These revelations are all fine and dandy, depressing as they are, since they bring to light the mismanagement of taxpayer funds and to some extent why the government has such problems managing its pocket money. But the more pertinent question is what are we going to do about it?
And what has been done in the past? Every year the Auditor-General exposes the excesses of the public service yet nothing concrete usually follows, even after a few weeks of uproar and calls for action.
This time around we are hearing talk that ministries will have to explain themselves over the exposes, and that the Auditor-General will present his findings more often. Tiger even heard that some are calling for the deputy prime minister as well as the federal opposition leader to head a triumvirate along with the Auditor-General to tackle these wrongdoings.
Will these really work? Tiger has strong doubts in his magnificent heart, because similar noises have been made before.
Why are there no officers, heads of departments and ministers brought to task publicly to take responsibility for such gross misuse of public funds over the years?
So it is time for some real action, Tiger thinks. Forget a triumvirate, Tiger can get all these wasteful public servants to embrace prudent spending habits.
Really, think about it. Tiger is the perfect creature for the job, not least of which because Tiger is so magnificent and awesome, but allow Tiger to elaborate if you are not already convinced.
For one, Tiger is a predator, and being a predator is harder than one might think (except for Tiger, since Tiger is so awesome that it comes easy). Tiger doesn’t get distracted from its job, and once Tiger homes in on a target, Tiger pounces when the time is right and gets the prey. No mis-hits and certainly no over-budgeting like how RTM paid 38 times more for each clock it bought.
And being a predator, Tiger is also very protective of its territory, and also very aware of boundaries. So give Tiger a ‘territory’ and Tiger will take care of it with its claws and jaws, and no lawsuits will arise from trespassing into someone else’s land illegally just because the government is too lazy to go through proper land acquisition channels.
As an aside, Tiger’s handsome self comes with a built-in fur coat, so whenever Tiger goes to cold climates such as Switzerland for learning trips, Tiger won’t have to spend any money on winter clothing. It would definitely cost less than the Auditor-General’s RM50,000 estimate and Tiger promises that it will not claim up to RM300,000.
Tiger also has its formidable built-in claws for enforcement purposes, so there is no worry of losing Tiger’s weapons at sea or anywhere else the police might have been losing their assets. Tiger also doesn’t need cars or even shoes, so it won’t need funding for these and won’t lose or dump them in a closet like the police force and customs department respectively did, so how much better can the deal get?
Plus Tiger has good music tastes which excludes any form of K-Pop music, so it won’t blow millions on K-Pop performances.
In fact Tiger already has the perfect plan in mind. If the prime minister sees sense and appoints Tiger to rectify these wrongdoings in the public service, Tiger’s first action will be to set up the Jimat 1 Malaysia Agency for Transformation or J1MAT for short.
J1MAT of course will be solely focused on teaching public servants how to be accountable and spend prudently. Although Tiger must admit that the first target in Tiger’s crosshairs is the prime minister himself, who spent RM44 million in his overseas trips in five years.
Too much, tsk tsk. Tiger can travel the whole world for much less.
And the best part is J1MAT’s operational costs will also not waste money, since Tiger has a brilliant plan. Tiger will demonstrate its efficiency and cat smarts by taking an interest-free, long-term soft loan from the government and putting the money as short-term deposits for the interest income.
After all the Bakun Dam was making 95% or thereabouts of their income from interest alone, so Tiger can definitely use that model to fund its operations.
Oh, Tiger is so brilliant. Wasteful public servants beware, here comes Tiger!
GRRRRR!
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