{"id":9026,"date":"2014-06-09T17:44:48","date_gmt":"2014-06-09T09:44:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/?p=9026"},"modified":"2014-06-09T17:44:48","modified_gmt":"2014-06-09T09:44:48","slug":"should-taxpayers-money-be-used-to-fund-the-deputy-prime-ministers-beach-holiday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/should-taxpayers-money-be-used-to-fund-the-deputy-prime-ministers-beach-holiday\/","title":{"rendered":"Should taxpayers\u2019 money be used to fund the Deputy Prime Minister\u2019s \u201cbeach holiday\u201d?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Steven Sim Chee Keong,\u00a0<\/strong>MP for Bukit Mertajam and\u00a0<\/strong>Zairil Khir Johari,\u00a0<\/strong>MP for Bukit Bendera<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"tsmy<\/a>During the last Parliamentary sitting in April 2014, we revealed leaked documents that showed Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin\u2019s \u201cworking visit\u201d to Dubai, UAE from 8 to 12 April 2014.<\/p>\n

According to the documents, which were later not denied but instead refuted as a \u201cdraft,\u201d Muhyiddin and his over-sized delegation flew on a \u201cspecial aircraft\u201d to Dubai, where he spent five days. Besides only a few official engagements, most of his time was spent on \u201cprivate programmes,\u201d informal events including with notable Malaysian construction companies Ahmad Zaki Resources Bhd and Eversendai Corporation, as well as golfing sessions. However, Muhyiddin\u2019s office later stated that the golf games were also part of his official programme.<\/p>\n

Extravagant and leisurely \u201cworking visits\u201d a norm?<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to the latest leaked documents by the same whistle-blower blog (peniupwisel2020.blogspot.com), it appears that the Dubai trip was not an isolated case, but that Muhyiddin has a tendency for such extravagant \u201cworking visits.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2012, the Deputy Prime Minister had apparently gone on a similar leisurely trip on taxpayers\u2019 expense, this time to Gold Coast, Australia.<\/p>\n

The itinerary (attached) shows that the trip from 10 to 18 November 2012 began with two days at Melbourne where Muhyiddin officiated the 4th World Chinese Economic Forum. After the conference, it would appear that Muhyiddin decided to treat himself, his wife and his team to a four days, five nights (4D5N) trip to Gold Coast, Brisbane, which is a world-famous holiday destination.<\/p>\n

Four days\u2019 trip, only two hours of \u201cwork\u201d a day<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the four full days spent in Gold Coast, Muhyiddin\u2019s activities only took up an average of only two hours a day. Most of these activities were one-hour briefings and dinners, including a meeting with Kelab Umno students. In fact, his third day in Gold Coast consisted of no official programme at all.<\/p>\n

Throughout the trip, Muhyiddin and his entourage stayed at the luxurious five-star Hilton Surfer\u2019s Paradise Hotel.<\/p>\n

\u201cCompany trip?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

To top things off, Muhyiddin\u2019s entire entourage consisted of 17 members, made up of six bodyguards, five special officers, two press secretaries, a political secretary, a private secretary, his wife and himself.<\/p>\n

In other words, they were no career civil servants or ministry officials accompanying him, just like in the Dubai trip recently. Is this because the Deputy Prime Minister does not trust his ministry officials, or is this because the trip to Gold Coast was nothing more than a glorified \u201ccompany trip\u201d for his staffers?<\/p>\n

Gold Coast for ministers, kangkung for the people<\/strong><\/p>\n

With the latest revelation, it is obvious that more and more Malaysians, especially civil servants, are determined to expose the extravagant spending of BN leaders involving the public purse.<\/p>\n

Instead of investigating the ministers involved, the government has instead threatened to take action against whistle-blowers, as clearly stated by Chief Secretary Tan Sri Ali Hamsa who has been reported to have said that the government \u201cwill take firm action including sacking civil servants found leaking its secrets,\u201d just shortly after the Dubai trip documents were initially revealed.<\/p>\n

Perhaps, Ali Hamsa should spend less effort defending his political masters\u2019 imprudent ways and put more initiative into saving public funds. This is all the more important considering the government is now telling Malaysians to tighten our belts as it cuts subsidies, increase prices and implementing a new consumption tax in the form of the GST (Goods and Services Tax).<\/p>\n

After all, why should Malaysians pay for our ministers\u2019 leisurely holidays at the beach while ordinary Malaysians are forced to face inflation and increasing income disparity?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Steven Sim Chee Keong,\u00a0MP for Bukit Mertajam and\u00a0Zairil Khir Johari,\u00a0MP for Bukit Bendera During the last Parliamentary sitting in April 2014, we revealed leaked documents that showed Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin\u2019s \u201cworking visit\u201d to Dubai, UAE from 8 to 12 April 2014. According to the documents, which were later not denied […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[274],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9026"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9028,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9026\/revisions\/9028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}