| Immigration Buys A Hotel
The director-general of immigration, Dato' Aseh
Che Mat, decides his department, as the "fourth revenue generating department",
is in need of a hotel in Port Dickson. Not for what hotels are for, but
to turn it into a training centre. How much would the hotel cost? You
would know of it on a
need-to-know basis. Training centres, you
understand, must be in places people go for holidays. And Port Dickson is
as good a travel destination as any. With the department collecting
RM1,000 million a year, how could it not have a training centre worth its name?
Was Parliament consulted?
Does it matter? Is it provided for in the
estimates? Does it matter? Would this training centre improve
service to the public? Does it matter? Why then does the
immigration department need a hotel-converted-into-a-training centre? Because
it is the fourth revenue generating centre?
But
Dato' Aseh is true to form. He would make a good cabinet minister from
Bolehland. He talks rubbish. He does not think through his ideas.
He says it because the newspapers would tell readers what great plans the immigration
department has for the people. He says it deals with 3.5 million people
each month, roughly one is six of the population, man woman and child.
This seems excessive, even taking foreign visitors into account. Never
mind, the immigration wants a hotel, the reasons why it needs it should not
be questioned. The important question is unanswered: Does the
immigration department need a training centre in Port Dickson? If it
does, why is not built into the immigration department offices itself
throughout the country, instead of concentrating it in one area, as it now plans?
What is wrong with hiring existing training centres as and when required,
instead of maintaining a white elephant.
The
huge crowds at immigration offices throughout the country has more to do with
staff inefficiency and rules that can be changed at will so that one who has
business with the department must come early and spend about a whole morning
there for what he came for. The staff has this view that we are there at
their convenience. There is no sense of purpose or urgency in what they
do. In this, they are no better than staff in government departments
elsewhere. If a
department earning a billion ringgit a year needs a training,
should not that be for all departments as a whole, if the aim is to increase
efficiency. In any case, is he saying he has horribly untraining staff?
More than training centres, the immigration needs a
sense of purpose. It
exists now to make the public wish it never had anything to do it. Once,
it required the public to queue up as early as 4 am to get a number, severely restricted,
so that one had to come, as I had to, two or three times before one was
obtained. Sure enough, short cuts were taken. Suddenly, newly
arrived people got the numbers those queueing up for hours could not.
When this was reported, I was waved aside though, to prove it had something
to hide, I was attended to immediately.
What is
this training centre going to do? How to make life for those who deal
with it difficult, or an extension of the leisure they indulge in at work?
Not only Dato' Aseh but the home minister himself must explain why, in these times
of hardship and lack of funds, the immigration department goes into the hotel
business. Hotel business? Yes, the rooms would have to be kept in shape
for those
attending. If one is needed, would it not have been cheaper in
the long run to hire it as and when required? But how could the fourth
largest revenue earner go and not have its own training centre?
M.G.G.
Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my
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