Little Napoleons in Local Government

LOCAL authorities can be mystifying. While one agency can spend RM30,000 as consultancy fees for planting flowers, another can send its staff on a "study tour" overseas without meeting a single official there.

And then there is the oft-quoted road resurfacing project that was carried out in five phases over a year when it could have been completed in two months — at slightly more than half the cost.

Earlier this year, Kuala Kangsar MP Datuk Seri Rafidah Aziz wondered how her municipal council could have requested RM51.5 million for landscaping but only RM1.5 million for poverty eradication.

So it came as no surprise when Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk M. Kayveas last Sunday lambasted the local authorities for their lack of transparency.

Mincing no words in front of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, the People’s Progressive Party president likened some of the 144 local authorities nationwide to secret societies.

The so-called "third government", he added, had been reduced to being tax-collection agencies.

While equating local government with triads may be a bit far-fetched, the truth is, many of these agencies have a poor track record. Running battles between rate-payers and the municipalities have been going on for years.

Residents are not the only ones who have to put up with the local authorities’ foot- dragging and mind-numbing bureaucracy. The councils have also been slow to respond to the Housing and Local Government Ministry’s various directives on installing closed-circuit television in crime-prone areas, for instance, and on dengue monitoring and control.

Why has the country’s most basic level of government — and one that affects the lives of the public most directly — lagged so far in its delivery of quality services?

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia’s Dr Katiman Rostam, a professor of Human Geography, says it all boils down to accountability.

All councillors are appointed by the State Government, many of them by virtue of their positions in the ruling parties. "It makes a world of difference whether you are elected by the people or appointed. Whom do councillors serve? The people or the councillors’ political masters?"

Financial constraints and manpower shortages also hamper the authorities. In some cases, the local authority has only one landscape engineer or a handful of health officers to monitor an area slightly smaller than Perlis.

The Opposition has wasted no time mining the public’s discontent over the councils’ poor performance. The DAP, for example, has long lobbied for a revival of local elections, suspended in 1965 following the Confrontation with Indonesia.

DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng says only by making councillors accountable to the people will significant progress be made in local government. When councillors are made to face the electorate every three or five years, they have to be on their toes to ensure that garbage gets collected on time and drains are not clogged.

The idea has found support among the public, many of whom are unhappy with their local authority. One of them is Pandan Perdana Residents Association president Desmond Lok, who receives over 200 complaints a month against the Ampang Jaya Municipal Council.

Realistically, however, democratising the local authorities is not likely to happen soon.

Katiman says that policy-makers know from experience worldwide that the Opposition tends to dominate such councils as part of the electorate’s desire for checks-and-balances. Local elections would also involve constitutional changes that are unlikely to pass muster in Parliament.

The Government is now looking at options other than the ballot box to shape up the local authorities.

Top of the agenda are legislative amendments freeing the councils to act on underperforming staff, such as by transferring them out. "Right now, it does not matter if you perform or don’t in the council because you know you will stay there," says Kayveas, himself a former Deputy Housing and Local Government Minister.

A ministry source says another option is to attach stricter conditions to federal grants, on which many local authorities depend. "Holding elections are an expensive affair. Since we are giving these councils money, we want to make sure that it is well spent. No buying of unsightly flowerpots that cost a bomb and no more lavish batik gifts for the councillors," he says.

The ministry is also mulling a proposal to set aside a quota for non-governmental representation in the councils. This will allow public interest groups to play a watchdog role.

But if these councils are to rid themselves of their baggage, drastic structural changes are needed. Dr N.A. Shanmuganathan, former Subang Jaya councillor and currently a PPP supreme council member, proposes that councillors be appointed to the councils’ technical committees, from which they are excluded.

These committees decide on everything from the approval of licences to road upgrading projects to the awarding of landscaping contracts.

At present, the technical committees are usually chaired by the heads of departments. They wield enormous power in deciding how to spend the council’s money and which application to approve. The full board meetings often act as rubber-stamps for decisions by these committees.

Kayveas also wants the local authorities to set up their own independent audit body, similar to Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, to ensure that their finances are not abused. The auditors, he adds, should first target officers living beyond their salaries.

Another suggestion is to appoint mayors or presidents of the local authorities from among serving politicians, especially State Assemblymen.

"This will make them accountable to the constituents. If they don’t perform well as chairman, they get the boot in the general election," says Subang Assemblyman and Subang Jaya councillor Datuk Lee Hwa Beng. He cites Batu Tiga Assemblyman Datuk Salamon Selamat’s sterling performance as Shah Alam mayor as an example.

Salamon has since June last year been replaced by Ramli Mahmud following the State Government’s decision to revert to its earlier policy of having non-politicians heading the council.

So far, the local authorities are showing little sign of bucking up. With the option of local council elections a distant possibility, overhauling the running of the local authorities is the next best solution to making them more accountable to rate-payers.