Selangorians' money spent on Azmin Ali's supporters

According to Menteri Besar Khalid, PKNS is able to save RM7 million a year just on these 22 who were sacked. Imagine how much the rest costs PKNS if just 22 people cost RM7 million.

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

There was some brouhaha recently when the services of 22 PKNS contract staff were terminated. Azmin Ali’s supporters screamed that they had been unfairly dismissed. Actually, there is a very valid reason as to why they were dismissed, as The Malay Mail report of 12th February 2004 (below) reveals.

PKNS is being used as the ‘vehicle’ to reward the supporters of certain key politicians in Pakatan Rakyat Selangor, in particular from PKR. These people are overpaid and they really have not much work to do so most times they just sit around reading newspapers. Furthermore, their salaries are way above what one would consider as market price.

Take the PKNS General Manager, Dato Othman Omar, as an example, the person who sent Azmin Ali his so-called ‘sacking’ letter. He is paid RM45,000 a month, which is more than twice what he would get in the public sector.

Most interesting would be Othman’s ‘Girl Friday’, Faridah Rohani Rais, who earns RM7,000 a month plus a special allowance of RM1,000 per hour just for writing the GM’s speeches and for acting as his ‘special consultant’.

The irony to this whole thing is another consultant, Consultant Kriss Communications, actually does Faridah’s work and is also paid RM1,000 an hour to duplicate her work. Then yet another consultant, Rafei from CT Cua, was paid RM200,000 to handle PKNS’s rebranding exercise.

Why is Faridah paid RM7,000 per month and RM1,000 per hour to do work that other people are paid huge sums of money to do?

Kee Lian Yong, the man in charge of Marketing and Special Projects, is paid RM10,000 a month, as are Marhain, Rustam Drury, Mahinder Singh, Fadzil Amidi, and Mior Mahathir.

Radha from Finance and Special Projects is paid RM16,000 a month, as are Puan Sharifah Susan, Dr. Ravindran, and Nurul Muaz Omar.

Puan Madihah Hassan is paid RM18,000 a month while Rosli Mohamad is paid RM20,000 and Dr Aliff Aiman Abdullah is paid RM27,000.

Dr Armeen Papazian, the consultant from Lebanon, was paid RM1.5 million in consultancy fees for work not done while Sahul Hamid Dawood received a total contract sum of more than RM3 million over two years although he did not complete his job and after he left they had to redo everything.

Then PKNS threw a wedding dinner for ‘Astronaut’ Dr Sheikh Muzaffar at a cost of RM520,000. PKNS also paid singer Zainal Abidin of ‘Hijau’ fame RM500,000 to help sell PKNS houses that in the end ended up unsold. So that is more than RM1 million in expenses to finance frivolous activities that brings no benefit to the poor and homeless of Selangor.

And the list goes on. I have in my hand pages and pages of such exorbitant expenses that can only be equated to a wastage of the taxpayers’ money. Those documents that I have in my possession reveal that many others receive between RM20,000 to RM30,000 a month for doing very little other than for being the supporters of certain people.

And you people complain that times are hard and that it is difficult to make ends meet in these hard and trying times? Well, that may be true for you. But that is not true for these PKNS people who are well paid to hardly do any work.

So PKNS decided to terminate the services of just 22 of these scores of redundant staff that really have no work to do and who were just duplicating the functions of the other employees. And they were paid compensation, too, on top of that.

According to Menteri Besar Khalid, PKNS is able to save RM7 million a year just on these 22 who were sacked. Imagine how much the rest costs PKNS if just 22 people cost RM7 million.

PKNS is an agency that is paid for by the taxpayers. It is not the place to park political supporters and pay them big fat salaries, allowances, and consultancy fees for doing nothing. That would be called abuse of power and corruption. And you dare tell us that Selangor has improved since the time Pakatan Rakyat took over the state?

And do you want to know how much in legal fees the state is paying the Pakatan Rakyat lawyers? You will be astonished if you were to look at the invoices that run into millions with no other details other than just ‘work done’.

Oh, and in case you have forgotten, this complaint was raised by the DAP lawyers so this is not what I say but what the DAP lawyers say.