PM outlines four issues that need special focus

PUTRAJAYA: Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak has outlined four issues that need to be given serious attention and greater focus by civil servants including staff of the Prime Minister's Department (JPM) to face the challenges and threats in 2015.
The four issues are challenges to peace, security and harmony; corruption and power abuse; national solidarity; and practising high-performance culture.
Speaking at the monthly assembly of the JPM at Dataran Putra, here today, Najib stressed that the four issues must be given attention so that Malaysia could achieve greater success.
At the final monthly assembly for 2014, the Prime Minister urged civil servants to look into the types of threats and challenges that were in store before entering the year to 2015.
"It is of course most appropriate for us to look back at what we have now achieved, our performance and what we can do in 2015, so that they would be better than our performance in 2014.
"Generally, there have been many positive successes in the aspect of managing the national economy to the extent that we managed to record a national economic growth of 6.1% in the first nine months of the year, which is the highest among the Asean member countries," he said.
Successes were also recorded in the implementation of the various programmes such as the Government Transformation Plan (GTP), Economic Transformation Plan (ETP), the Blue Ocean Strategy, and securing a non-permanent member seat in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), he said.
Commenting on the challenges to peace, security and harmony, Najib said the threat from the so called Islamic State (IS) militant group was very serious and most dangerous to the extent that the government decided that a white paper be tabled in Parliament on the matter.
He said 39 Malaysian nationals were involved in the IS in Syria and Iraq while Malaysia also detained 40 more Malaysian nationals. Another Malaysian national became a suicide bomber who caused the death of 25 Syrian soldiers, he added.
Najib said there was a possibility that another Malaysian national who was using a pseudonym had become a suicide bomber.
"I had not mentioned this in Parliament. This suicide bomber had even committed more horrible acts resulting in the death of 50 people. These are all serious threats," said Najib.
The Prime Minister said civil servants at the lower ranks were not excluded from being influenced by the IS ideology and fortunately, action had been taken to tackle the problem.
He said the government had decided to table the special bill and the amendments to existing bills such as Sosma or the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act at the coming session in order to improve its capability to tackle the threat.
Najib said the security threat in the Eastern Sabah Security Zone (ESSZone) was still serious.
"Although there have been no incidents in the last couple of days, it does not mean that the threat is not serious. In fact, we took measures to strengthen our capability to face the situation there. We must defend Sabah from any form of threat," he said.
Najib said although Malaysia's achievement in the rankings of the Corruption Perception Index had improved to 50 this year out of 175 countries, compared with 53 previously, matters concerning corruption and power abuse had become of public concern.
On national solidarity, he called on everyone to give special attention on the efforts to inculcate national unity and solidarity.
"Although the process takes time, we have to show maturity based on the values of mutual respect between one another," he said.
The Prime Minister also praised the solidarity demonstrated by Malaysians on the Day of National Mourning on Aug 22 following the tragic crash of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 which was shot down in east Ukraine on July 17.
On the high-performance culture, Najib called on the civil servants to continue to practice the culture by improving productivity and implementing innovations. – Bernama