Weed out the problematic, errant, incompetent officers early

Upholding integrity: Ismail (centre) chairing the EAIC coordination meeting with heads of enforcement agencies. — Bernama

Problematic government officers found to be involved in malpractices or wrongdoings must have their services terminated early to put an end to integrity issues involving civil servants and management,  proposed the Enforcement Agency Integrity Commission (EAIC).

Its chairman Tan Sri Ismail Bakar said the Malaysian civil service was once revered among the Commonwealth nations but noted that it is now entangled with integrity issues.

Ismail said giving marching orders to civil servants who are problematic is the way to go to prevent integrity issues from festering at the new department these officers are transferred to.

ALSO READ: Prepare to lose your job if you fail to report graft cases, warns MACC chief“

We are working on eradicating problematic officers in (government) agencies by way of early termination of their service. If the government agrees on this, it will be easier for us to perform our duties,” he said.

Ismail provided examples of court cases involving civil servants who have engaged in malpractice or misconduct.

“But we lost (the case). With the relevant laws, we can see how to terminate their service without having their case concluded in court trials,

Ismail said there has been precedent where problematic officials were terminated, citing existing regulations such as the Public Officers (Conduct and Discipline) 1993 that provide for this.

ALSO READ: ‘Be transparent in sacking corrupt civil servants’

He described the practice of transferring problematic officials to a different department as “a vicious cycle”, which might not be a deterrent.

“What is also worrying is that some civil servants and enforcement officers would get a third party, such as an influential individual or a company, to protect their wrongdoings.

“What is more saddening is that there are higher-ups who are complicit in their subordinates’ wrongdoings.

“In fact, some have even led such activities. Such deeds have tarnished the civil service’s image,” Ismail said.

ALSO READ: ‘Problematic’ civil servants risk early termination, says EAIC chief

He said if enforcement agencies’ disciplinary bodies do not adopt EAIC’s recommendations, it sends a signal that they are not serious about eradicating wrongdoing.

Ismail, who is a former chief secretary to the government, also said that low wages should not be an excuse to be corrupt.

“You already knew your wages (before joining the service), so why did you still take up the job?

“Never use low wages to legitimise corruption,” he said in his opening remarks at the EAIC coordination meeting with enforcement agencies’ department heads yesterday.

“If you love the civil service, carry out the duties you are assigned responsibly,” he said.

Ismail said the EAIC had received 229 reports on integrity cases between June 1, 2023, and May 31, this year, with the highest number of cases related to the Immigration Department.

During this period, the commission initiated 17 investigation papers regarding alleged malpractices by civil servants.

Almost 90% of the probes have been completed and decisions have already been reached regarding two individuals who are being investigated.

The EAIC had, among other things, recommended terminating the public officers’ service, halting their promotion and issuing warnings.

EAIC is a federal statutory body responsible for monitoring and investigating public complaints about the alleged misconduct of enforcement officers or agencies as listed in Act 700.

Currently, it has 21 enforcement agencies under its supervision.

This includes the Immigration Department, Customs Department, Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency, National Registration Department and Road Transport Department, among others.Ismail also said that the commission is looking for more agencies to fall under its jurisdiction.

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Backing the US house of cards

 

The United States of America is in competition with China, but not ideologically. Who initiated the first agreements with China to outsource factories if not the United States of America themselves? They cannot tell us that it is a fight for freedom… It’s [ ] because China is becoming the world’s leading power, and from there, gradually, dollars will no longer be used as much as before to trade goods. Thus, the empire is hit at its core.”

“Its core is its currency, which it can print as much as it wants because it is not bound by any of the rules that apply to all other nations. They can print as much as they want, as long as you need it for your exchanges, to buy raw materials, to buy oil, to buy minerals, etc., etc. And the day it stops, that is, the day nations agree among themselves to pay in their currency, it’s over, and the empire collapses.”

– From a recent speech by French Left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, shared on X & translated by Arnaud Bertrand.

Melenchon articulates what lies at the heart of the ‘China threat’ – a threat Australia is committed to warding off with hundreds of billions of Australian taxpayer dollars, though that threat is couched in very different terms for public consumption.

At the same time as it has enjoyed the privilege of printing money, the US has weaponised the dollar, imposing unilateral sanctions that are then also adopted by its allies. Whilst this has been a longstanding practice, it is the recent sanctions imposed against Russia that have accelerated a move away from the dollar, with adversaries and some allies turning to alternative settlement mechanisms.

The European Central Bank has acknowledged the world is becoming more multipolar and the dominance of the US dollar is in decline as moves to dedollarise accelerate and new strategic alliances emerge, not least that of BRICS and the key China Russia alliance – the latter very much an own goal for the US.

The US reiterated in Singapore recently that in spite of its involvement in Ukraine and Israel, the Indo-Pacific is the country’s main focus, not Europe or the Middle East – ‘Indo-Pacific’ the nomenclature now widely adopted in the West, where China is the elephant in the region that had long been the Asia-Pacific.

The US has 313 bases in east Asia out of 750 worldwide, and while its own geography precludes a reciprocal strategy, it constitutes a show of force against China, now boosted by AUKUS.

The China ‘threat’ has been a long-standing fear in Australia – ‘yellow peril’, the threat of being invaded, and with it the threat of the imposition of communism. Nothing in China’s recent history justifies such a fear, which is extended to a more generalised dread of the rise of a global bad faith actor. That we are led to fear what China might do, will do, in the face of what the US has actually done beggars belief.

Economic growth brings power and influence and the ways in which the US has used its power and influence have been transparent despite attempts at subterfuge. The American era will be remembered for an order not based on international law, but a Rules-Based-Order where the US sets the rules and gives the orders: endless wars to sustain its military industrial complex have killed millions, displaced millions, and in the case of Iraq destroyed an entire nation, and anti-democratic behaviour where it has toppled elected leaders who have had the temerity to prosecute their sovereign interests and resisted coercion.

US heavyweight geopolitical analyst and former darling of the political establishment and legacy media, John Mearsheimer recently clarified this for Piers Morgan who has been among the sea of advocats for benign US intervention to champion democracy, in a sobering demolition of that illusion.

Since Mearsheimer’s criticism of US involvement in Ukraine, and now the US role in Israel & the Occupied Territories, he has been unceremoniously dumped from almost all platforms available to him in his decades-long career and his views are now to be found almost exclusively in independent media.

Mearsheimer is however a China hawk – a recognition that the central interest in the prosecution of US foreign policy should be economic, because it is the base from which the US exerts power and influence. But China will not be ‘contained’ economically. Which great power would? Enter the potential for a major – and possibly nuclear – war in our front yard.

Mearsheimer famously warned Australia will sacrifice its prosperity for security. He also alerted us to be aware there is only one thing more dangerous than being an enemy of the United States, and that is to be its friend. As the Ukrainian people have discovered.

More recently he warned if we are trading with China and friendly with China, we will be an enemy of the US. Australia has yet to see the full consequence of this in the leadup to hostilities.

Yet we are told, The China Threat .. is to shipping lanes, though China has as great if not greater interest in protecting those shipping lanes – trade has played an integral part in enabling it to drag 800 million of its 1.4 billion people out of poverty.

The China Threat .. is to Taiwan, an island historically linked to China in both its ethnic composition & administration, but which became the base of a ‘Chinese-government-in-exile’. Its current situation is a consequence and remnant of the Chinese civil war .

The Chinese have not forgotten Taiwan was used as a base to attack China by Japan in late 1930’s and are understandably unhappy to have US bases on the island – U.S. Special Forces are now permanently stationed at a pair of bases barely a mile from China’s mainland coast.

Taiwan is critical for the US as a base from which to threaten and provoke China. Brandishing this as some sort of defence of democratic values and sovereignty is disingenuous and flies in the face of a real understanding of US foreign policy strategy, as Mearsheimer points out.

China’s actual threat & great sin has been to outstrip the US in economic growth.

With economic growth comes power and influence, but there is no evidence that China is using or intends to use that power and influence in the same way the United States has.

There are no geopolitical commentators as knowledgeable, incisive and constructive for our region as Kishore Mahbubani who points out we are now in the Asian Century, the unipolar world is gone, and one of the defining questions of our time is whether the South China Sea will be a zone of peace or a zone of war.

What is threatening peace? Which narrative of the two is right? What can we do about it? In answering these 3 questions, Mahbubani reveals Xi Jinping made an offer to Barack Obama for both countries to demilitarise the South China Sea but the offer was rebuffed. Factually true he says, but ‘the Anglo Saxon media will never tell the alternative story’, in fact they prefer to, ‘tell outright lies’. He rebuffs many western misconceptions about the US China stand-off.

Our leadership would do well to listen to what Mahbubani has to say.

Risking nuclear war to prop up a fading hegemon bears the hallmark of a catastrophic mistake with disastrous consequences for humanity and the planet. Our times call for outstanding leadership. We navigate the challenges of this century to our great peril without it.

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Mary Kostakidis

Mary Kostakidis is a journalist. She presented SBS World News for two decades.

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Dengue vaccine is now available

 

[L-R] Takeda India and Southeast Asia Head of Medical Affairs, Dr Goh Choo Beng, Dengue Prevention Advocacy Malaysia [DPAM] Chairman Prof. Datuk Dr Zulkifli Ismail, Takeda Malaysia, Singapore Country General Manager, Dr Lynette Moey and Takeda Malaysia and Singapore Vaccine Franchise Head Sony Paul at the launching of Takeda's Dengue vaccine in Malaysia at One World Hotel on June 11. — AZMAN GHANI/The Star

PETALING JAYA: Malaysians can now protect themselves against dengue by getting vaccinated.The Drug Control Authority recently approved the first dengue vaccine for use in the country.

Manufactured by the pharmaceutical company Takeda, the vaccine named Qdenga protects against all four dengue virus serotypes. It is particularly effective against the serotype-2 virus (DENV-2), which is currently the dominant viral strain in Malaysia.

Results from the vaccine’s phase III clinical trial show that it had prevented 80.2% of symptomatic dengue cases, at one year after vaccination.

It had also prevented 90.4% of hospitalisations at 18 months after vaccination. 

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Takeda Malaysia and Singapore country general manager Dr Lynette Moey said, “If you see a table with 10 people, eight out of 10 of them would have experienced the efficacy of the vaccine.

ALSO READ : Dengue kills

“And at that same table, nine out of 10 of them need not go to the hospital because of serious disease.”

The latest available data shows that the vaccine still protects 84.1% of people against hospitalisation and 61.2% against symptomatic dengue. The data was collected four-and-a-half years after the trial participants had received their vaccines.

Currently, Qdenga is available at selected private clinics and hospitals throughout the country.

Responding to a question about the cost of the vaccine, she said that each healthcare facility would determine the price they would charge.

The vaccine can be taken by those aged four years and older. “This wide age range allows us to extend protection to a larger group of eligible Malaysians, including children, adults and even senior citizens,” Dr Moey said.

The vaccine can also be safely taken by those who have not had a prior dengue infection.

This was an issue with the first dengue vaccine licensed for use in 2015 in a number of countries.

It was found that this vaccine, produced by the pharmaceutical company Sanofi, actually increased the risk of hospitalisations and severe dengue disease in those who had not previously been infected at the time of vaccination.

Dengue Prevention Advocacy Malaysia chairman Prof Datuk Dr Zulkifli Ismail explained, “The second dengue infection is invariably more severe than the first – it’s caused by two different serotypes.

“If you get the vaccine, that will be considered as the first infection, which is not severe.

“If you get infected by a second infection, that is the one that causes severe disease. That is what happened with the previous vaccine.”

However, the consultant paediatrician and paediatric cardiologist said that this effect showed after two years of the previous vaccine being administered.

“This vaccine (Qdenga) has been tested for four-and-a-half-years and there have been no red flags as far as this is concerned.

“So it is quite hopeful and I don’t think we will see it,” he said.

The vaccine is administered by injection and is given in two doses, three months apart.

According to Takeda India and South-East Asia Medical Affairs head Dr Goh Choo Beng, there are currently no plans or data to support the need for a booster shot.

He said that any side effects from the vaccine were common ones related to vaccines and are mild in nature.

These include pain and redness at the injection site, mild fever, headache, muscle pain, feeling unwell and general weakness.

Dr Moey, Prof Zulkifli and Dr Goh were all present at the official launch of Qdenga in a hotel here yesterday

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Prolonging the phone’s life

Smartphones are getting a longer life, with extended software updates promising up to seven years of use.

EVERY smartphone has an expiration date. That day arrives when the software updates stop coming and you start missing out on new apps and security protections. With most phones, this used to happen after about three years.

But things are finally starting to change. The new number is seven.

Google announced that with its Pixel 8 smartphone, released in October, it is committed to providing software updates for the phone for seven years, up from three years for its previous Pixels.

This year, Samsung, the most profitable Android phone maker, set a similar software timeline for its flagship Galaxy S24.

Both companies said they had expanded their software support to make their phones last longer. This is a change from how companies used to talk about phones.

Not long ago, tech giants unveiled new devices that encouraged people to upgrade every two years.

But in the past few years, smartphone sales have slowed down worldwide as their improvements have become more marginal. Nowadays, people want their phones to endure.

Samsung and Google, the two most influential Android device makers, are playing catch-up with Apple, which has traditionally provided software updates for iphones for roughly seven years.

These moves will make phones last much longer and give people more flexibility to decide when it’s time to upgrade.

Google said in a statement that it had expanded its software commitment because it wanted customers to feel confident in Pixel phones. And Samsung said it would deliver seven years of software updates, which increase security and reliability, for all its Galaxy flagship phones from now on.

Here’s what you should know about why this is happening and what you can do to make your phone last longer.

Why is this happening?

In the past, Android phone makers said the technical process of providing software updates was complicated, so to stay profitable, they dropped support after a few years. But tech companies are now under intense external pressure to invest in making their devices last longer.

In 2021, the US Federal Trade Commission announced that it would ramp up enforcement against tech companies that made it difficult to fix and maintain their products.

That accelerated the “right to repair” movement, a piece of proposed US legislation that required companies to provide the parts, tools and software to extend the lives of their products.

Google announced its new commitment to smartphones after being pressured to make a similar move for its laptops.

In September, the company agreed to expand software support for its Chromebook to 10 years, up from eight, in response to a grassroots campaign that highlighted how shortlived Google laptops were causing budget crunches in schools.

Nathan Proctor, a director at US PIRG, a non-profit largely funded by small donors that led the Chromebook campaign, said the new standard of seven years of support for smartphones would have a profound effect.

“It’s a huge win for the environment,” he said. “I want to see more of it.”

What else do I need to do?

Software updates are one big part of what keeps a phone working well, but there are other steps to lengthen smartphone lives, similar to maintaining a car.

They include replacing the phone battery every two years. The lithium-ion batteries in phones have a finite life. After about two years, the amount of charge they can hold diminishes, and it’s wise to replace the battery.

Replacing a smartphone battery isn’t easy, so it’s best to get help from the manufacturer’s service centre or a reputable shop.

Some smartphone companies, for instance, allow customers to schedule a battery replacement appointment at a retail store through their website.

Protect it

Smartphones are still mostly made of glass, so to make a phone last seven years, it’s wise to invest in a high-quality case.

A screen protector is an extra safeguard, though many won’t enjoy how it distorts the picture quality of the screen. The New York Times’ sister site that reviews products, Wirecutter, recommends cases from brands like Smartish, Spigen, and Mujjo, or cases from the phone makers themselves.

Unless you’re very accident-prone, I recommend against buying extended warranties because their costs can exceed the cost of a repair.

Clean it

Smartphones have few moving parts, so there’s little we have to do to physically maintain them. But most of us neglect cleaning the parts that we rarely look at: charging ports and speaker holes.

Over time, those holes are clogged with dirt, pocket lint and makeup. That built-up debris can make a phone take longer to charge or a phone call more difficult to hear.

“It’s the belly button lint of cellphones,” said Kyle Wiens, CEO of ifixit, a site that publishes instructions and sells parts to repair electronics.

Fortunately, he added, you don’t need a fancy tool. Just use a toothpick to dig out the gunk.

Should you upgrade?

I always recommend buying a product based on the here and now – what it can do for you today, as opposed to what companies say it will do in the future. You should continue to buy a phone based on this principle.

Plenty of people will choose to upgrade sooner for other reasons, like getting a new feature such as a better camera or a longer-lasting battery.

But those who just want to buy a phone that lasts as long as possible should pick one that will be economical to repair when things break.

By BRIAN X. CHEN

Smartphones can now last seven years. Here's how to ...

Every smartphone has an expiration date. That day arrives when software updates stop coming and you start missing out on new apps and security protections. With most phones, this happened after about only three years. Things are finally starting to change. The new number is seven. — The New York Times

https://www.thestar.com.my › tech-news › 2024/05/28