Corporatising the Local Councils ?

It was reported in the New Straits Time on 7th Nov 2005 that a survey conducted by University Malaya claimed that “many people” want local councils to be corporatised. My comments are simple – Who commissioned this survey ? Who are the people in University Malaya conducted this survey ? and, Who are “the people” being surveyed, and “How Many” of these people surveyed want the councils to be corporatized ?

The survey also claimed that majority of the people surveyed want a corporate body be formed to oversee the operations of the local councils. The question is, why create redundant resources to oversee the local councils when they are currently being supervised by the Housing and Local Government Ministry ? What makes us think that the new corporate body can do a better job than the Housing & Local Government Ministry ?

It was also reported that “60 per cent of the councilors only had Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia qualifications while the president was a graduate….”. it amazed me that how these “lowly qualified” people managed to get appointed as the decision making councilors in the local councils. Why “professionally and academically” qualified people are not being appointed to run the local councils ?

My layman opinion is, I believed most of the councilors are political appointees. In another words, there are not accountable to the local residents for the job performances. So it doesn’t really matter what kind of models or corporate structures the local councils adopt. The end results will always be the same, or perhaps we may see some slight improvements.

Why spend unnecessary monies conducting unnecessary surveys ? The best solution to improve the local council’s performance is to conduct local elections to elect councilors by the local residents. And, the “election commission” should only allow “professionally and academically” qualified people to stand for elections.