‘SPAD, Jasa among entities disbanded to reduce govt spending’

PUTRAJAYA: Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad yesterday announced the disbandment of several government-linked agencies and institutions in a move to reduce government spending.

These entities include the Land Public Transport Commission ( SPAD), Special Affairs Department, National Council of Professors ( MPN) and Federal Village Development and Security Committee (JKKKP).

“Most of these institutions are not actually part of the government, (they are) supposed to advise the government. All these things will be disbanded.

“We don’t need their intelligence; I think we are quite intelligent ourselves,” he said at a press conference after chairing the first meeting of the new Cabinet at Perdana Putra here.

Dr Mahathir said the matter of disbanding the entities was discussed at the Cabinet meeting which focused on introducing measures to reduce the national debt that had reached RM1 trillion under the previous government.

He said the duties of SPAD would be taken over again by the Ministry of Transport.

On the disbandment of MPN and JKKKP, he said the two institutions had come under political influence under the previous government.

“Initially, MPN was an entity which we utilised to obtain information from people who were highly knowledgeable but lately, there has been political influence, so much so that they were used to support the government. That’s why we do not want to repeat the bad practices of the previous government,” he said.

“We found that salaries were paid to the JKKKP members as though there was an additional government in the states; it became politicised and was not administrative in nature. We have government officers to undertake those duties. We will not pay the JKKKP members because we do not desire to practise the politics of the previous government,” he said.

Asked about the Bandar Malaysia, Tun Razak Exchange (TRX) and Pan Borneo Highway projects, Dr Mahathir said: “We are studying which ones we can scrap, which ones will continue, which ones I will defer until a later date.”

Dr Mahathir said the disbandment of institutions and the review of projects were carried out as part of the measures to reduce government spending that ran into billions of ringgit.

“We have identified much expenditure in the old budget, in old projects that we can reduce. They go into billions of ringgit but we cannot go into the details.

“As much as we can reduce government spending, surely there will be projects that will be dropped, that we may stop, that we may renegotiate to reduce the cost to a level that we can afford,” he said. — Bernama