KUALA LUMPUR: Lower-ranking officers of the Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) will be moved to other departments every three years to stamp out abuse of power and corruption.
Federal Territories Minister Khalid Abdul Samad said this was necessary because these officers were exposed to more opportunities for corrupt practices.
“They deal with contractors and traders and over time, they develop relationships with these vendors. Then they start to give them special treatment,” he told reporters at the Parliament lobby today.
He said the practice was rife among those in the lower ranks. “We can address this by moving them from one post to another (thereby severing their ties with the traders),” he said.
The programme was launched early this year, he added. Kuala Lumpur mayor Datuk Nor Hisham Ahmad Dahlan has already begun the reshuffling exercise and a number of officers have already been transferred from their departments.
However, Khalid said, the new policy would not involve the higher ranking officers because the number of positions at the higher level was limited and all transfers had to be within DBKL.
“For instance, we have only four executive directors, so we can only get them to swap places,” he said.
On Tuesday 16 individuals, including several DBKL officers, were arrested by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) on suspicion of accepting bribes to protect massage parlours in and around the federal capital.
Khalid said since Pakatan Rakyat took over the reins of government, about 20 DBKL officers had been called up for questioning by the MACC over questionable deals involving land in the city centre.
The deals, involving billions of ringgit, were struck under Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor’s watch as minister.
