Executive councillors pledge to improve performance
JOHOR BARU: Johor state executive councillors yesterday pledged to improve their performance after getting their annual “report card” during the 2017 Johor Exco Away Day.
The annual event is a unique one-day conference. In its third year, the conference is mainly to disseminate information about the state’s progress and public initiatives.
State Housing and Local Government Committee chairman
Datuk Md Jais Sarday, who pre- viously held the education, infor- mation, entrepreneur develop- ment and cooperatives portfolio, said he would improve on where he failed according to his key performance indicators (KPIs) last year.
Jais, who took over the housing and local government portfolio two months ago, said the KPI system had allowed him to identify where he failed, asserting it was not an “examination” and was intended to encourage good governance.
State Unity and Human Resources Committee chairman R. Vidyanathan said that despite some unfulfilled components in the 15 KPIs he set out for himself last year, he was confident he could resolve them this year.
“Long-term plans are being made to ensure all initiatives under my portfolio will continue to be carried out efficiently,” he said.
He said a challenge he faced was to bring in programmes to the state as many aspects of his portfolio involved federal-level departments.
Johor PKR vice-chairman Jimmy Puah Wee Tse urged Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin to ensure capable people were running the state government.
He said if there were those who failed to reach the bare minimum expectation, the Johor government must consider changing them or at least shifting their portfolios.
“I think the KPI is just one way of evaluating performance.
“There are many more ways to assess an executive councillor’s performance that may be more subjective rather than objective, as seen in quantitative-based KPI,” said Puah, who is also Bukit Batu assemblyman.
He said the fact that seven out of the nine executive councillors obtained satisfactory scores in last year’s KPI showed the state government may be facing a trust deficit issue.
“To be fair to them, I do not know the components of their KPIs.
“But all things being equal, I think the government is facing a trust deficit issue now with one executive councillor (Datuk Abd Latif Bandi) being forced to resign over the property corruption issue and now two executive councillors have failed to meet their KPIs,” he said.