Government should fight crime not manage perception, says PKR
UPDATED @ 04:58:32 PM 13-07-2012
KUALA LUMPUR, July 13 — PKR today said the government should focus on fighting crime instead of managing how the public views crime.
PKR also disputed the figures given by PEMANDU, after the government’s efficiency unit had yesterday said that it spent only 0.75 per cent of its Government Transformation Programme (GTP) allocation for public relations exercises on crime.
“The rakyat demands action on crime and not perception management,” said PKR president Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Ismail (picture).
She accused PEMANDU of distracting the public from the bigger picture, which was that the government’s “overwhelming objective... is to spend on public perception management of reducing fear of crime”, insisting that 71 per cent or close to RM170 million of the nation’s 2012 Budget allocation for crime was used for this purpose.
She clarified that PKR had not said that the 71 per cent was spent on “boosting public relations towards the police”, but had said it was spent on “managing perception of fear of crime”.
She claimed PEMANDU’s reply “is inadequate as it does not address the real problem at hand”, adding that it had thrown in the 0.75 per cent (RM1.8million) figure “without disclosing the full budget expenditure”.
During Dr Wan Azizah’s Tuesday press conference, the PKR leader had highlighted figures from the Home Ministry’s allocation for the government’s “Reduce Crime” National Key Results Area in Budget 2012.
The allocation totalled RM240 million, with RM8.8 million to reduce index crime, RM28 million to reduce street crime, RM6.6 million to bring crime offenders to justice, RM3.5 million as wages for investigating officers, and some RM27 million to increase public satisfaction in the police.
Dr Wan Azizah today said that “surely the goal of increasing public satisfaction of police, must fall under their (PEMANDU’s) own definition of public relations.”
She said “the budget allocated for that goal is RM27million, which is 11.25 per cent of the operating budget and not merely 0.75 per cent as is stated.”
